


Experimental Psychology

by featherandink



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Occlumency, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Slow Burn, its not all sad sometimes life is funny, so much harry & hermione and theo & draco friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:08:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24480349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherandink/pseuds/featherandink
Summary: “It’s not— that bad of an idea, really,” Hermione said, as if saying the words out loud might convince herself. “We’re both... intelligent. It could really work.”A scowl settled across Malfoy's features. “I don’t care for being used as a means to fulfill your intellectual desires.”“That’s strange,” she replied, arching an eyebrow. “I would’ve thought that would garner a compliment from a Slytherin.”
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 24
Kudos: 81





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Dramione fic since 2012, if that's any indication of what quarantine has done to my brain. Of course, I hope you all are doing well. I missed writing very much but am also very out of practice, and I'm sure that'll make itself evident. My apologies in advance! I hope to update this story weekly, but we'll see how that goes.
> 
> Disclaimer: This fics deals heavily with the topics of PTSD and dissociation. I have personal experience with the latter and have drawn upon it quite a bit, but everyone experiences these things differently. That being said, if you come across a depiction/description of these issues that bothers you, feel free to let me know.
> 
> Also, quick plug for the book quoted at the beginning of each chapter, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. Its a super helpful read on the relationship between the body and trauma that has helped my personal healing tremendously.

* * *

_"Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than with fear, everything shifts."_

**— Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score**

* * *

By the time Hermione began her shift at St. Mungo’s, the gossip was spreading around like Fiendfyre, for lack of a better word.

Though it wasn’t the largest headline on that day’s _Daily Prophet_ — that award went to an update on the Ministry’s plans to commemorate the annual anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, which both Harry and Hermione glanced at and subsequently ignored— it was deemed noteworthy enough to take up a small corner at the bottom of the front page.

The byline read, quite ridiculously: _“SCORNED DEATH EATER DRACO MALFOY ATTEMPTS ARSON: ATONEMENT OR ASYLUM?”_

“Oi, ‘Mione. Did you see this?” Harry asked her that morning, his mouth full of bagel and lox. Before she could even look up from the cup of tea she was brewing, he continued, never known to be patient: “Apparently Malfoy started a fire at the Manor.”

At the mention of the familiar name, Hermione’s face shot up from the cup of tea she was preparing. Immediately afterwards, she felt a few drops of boiling hot water splash onto her hand. She cursed silently as her fingers flinched away reflexively.

“Malfoy?” she managed, pressing her swelling fingers into her thigh for relief.

She hadn’t seen their former classmate since her eighth year at Hogwarts. It was impossible not to interact with him due to the small size of their class, but he’d been surprisingly tolerable. Annoying, still, but not malicious. He’d even approached her one night in the library to apologize to her for— well, _everything_ — while furiously ignoring eye contact.

( _“Right. Of course,” he stammered after Hermione told him that while she appreciated his apology, she was ultimately unwilling to forgive his transgressions. “That’s— perfectly reasonable," he assured her, in a strangled tone that indicated otherwise. If she hadn't been struggling to comprehend what was going on, Hermione would've laughed at the strange sight of Draco Malfoy so clearly uneasy. She tried to think of what might happen if he passed out._

_"Nevertheless, extend my apologies to—” he glanced down at Hermione fiddling with the sleeve on her left arm, and his pallor grew paler than she thought was humanly possible. “Your lackeys.”_

_With a sharp nod and a flare of his nostrils, he promptly bolted from the library._ )

Though she still couldn’t forgive him for all the things he had done, Hermione no longer held any sort of hatred for the man. There were some things she simply had to move past, and there was only so much room in her heart for such strong emotions anyways.

“Draco Malfoy?” she asked, just to be sure.

Harry took a sip of coffee and nodded in confirmation, holding her gaze with a look on his face that told her it should be obvious.

“Yes, Draco,” he replied slowly. “I mean, seeing as Lucius is in Azkaban—”

Over the kitchen counter, Hermione shot him a look full of so much displeasure it sent Harry into silence.

“It could’ve been Narcissa,” she told him plainly. “No need to be sexist.”

With her eyes still shooting daggers over the rim of her cup, Hermione looked on at Harry expectantly.

His response was a furrowed brow and a visible swallow of his breakfast.

“Right.” He cleared his throat, drawing his eyes away from Hermione’s glare. “Well. My apologies to the female race for not accusing Narcissa Malfoy of—” he glanced back down at the paper, “—Attempting to burn her estate down.”

If Hermione had been in reach of either, she would’ve swatted Harry with the paper. Was that what happened when one grew up under the hold of a manipulative old wizard in lieu of a mother figure? They said things like _the_ _female race_?

“Anyways,” Harry said, getting up from their dining table before Hermione could move to do said bodily damage, “I’d better get going before I’m late again. McGonagall might personally serve my head on a platter if I miss another staff training.”

He folded the paper up haphazardly and dusted his robes of bagel crumbs and sesame seeds. Hermione sighed as she watched the food particles fall to the floor like snowflakes.

“You could always live on the grounds, you know,” she offered. It was the beginning to a conversation they’d had a million times before.

As he did every time she brought up the topic, Harry looked at her with such abject horror on his face it made her stifle a chuckle.

“That’s not the point,” he retorted, running a hand through his messy hair. His face scrunched into a grimace. “The point is, I hate these bloody staff trainings. All we do is—”

Hermione groaned internally. Harry’s hatred for Hogwarts monthly staff meetings was another topic of frequent conversation, though it was far more one-sided listening on her part.

( _“We just sit there and_ talk _, ‘Mione. About_ curriculum _. I’m getting itchy just thinking about it. Don’t you think it’d be more beneficial if I didn’t come up with a lesson plan? It_ is _Defense Against the Dark Arts, after all._ )

“I know, Harry. I suspect I’ll be hearing about your hatred for these trainings tonight.” Though at face value the words seemed bitter, Hermione's voice lacked any trace of annoyance.

Harry sensed that she was teasing and gave her an embarrassed smile, unable to deny what they both knew was inevitable. Hermione tried to repress a small grin from appearing on her own face, though the corner of her mouth twitched upwards in betrayal.

“And I’m thankful that you always listen,” he told her in earnest. “Why would I want to live with anyone other than my best friend?”

His sincerity lasted approximately three seconds before he let out a dramatic sigh.

“Besides,” he continued, with an upward lilt in his voice that Hermione recognized as mischief. “As you know, my life has been rather strange enough as it is. No need to start living in the same place where I died at 17.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and released a groan, this time out loud. For a wizard who despised all the attention afforded to him as a result of being the fulfiller of a literal prophecy, Harry could be exceptionally smug about the whole thing. She had an ongoing suspicion that he saved up all of the vanity that went along with being the Chosen One to irritate her specifically.

“You work at that same place, in the exact position that was cursed by the very person who killed you,” she pointed out.

Harry took one last sip of his coffee and placed the now empty mug on the table with a loud clang. Though he was a good roommate otherwise, he had a bad habit of leaving dirty dishes out for Hermione to clean. She didn't really mind, preferring her Muggle way of cleaning dishes anyways, but some things were more about the principle.

“Work is different. You know that.”

She scoffed, already stepping outside of the kitchen to grab his mug as Harry moved towards the fireplace. Their movements were simultaneous, him away from the table and her towards, in a sort of synchronized dance that felt rather natural to them now.

“Oh—” he started, realizing that his dirty mug was still on the table. A sheepish apology appeared on his face.

“Just go,” she mumbled, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. She grabbed the mug, stained with a ring of dark brown coffee around its circumference, and placed it in the kitchen sink before moving back towards the counter to finish her cup of tea. Though it was still warm, it was considerably cooler than it had been when it burned her fingers just a few short minutes ago. “And fix your glasses; they’re lopsided.”

As one of Harry’s hands tossed a pile of Floo powder into the fireplace with practiced ease, the other reached up to adjust the position of his glasses. Though Hermione had grown used to his casual displays of nearly perfect hand-eye coordination, she felt a twinge of admiration and jealousy at the sight. Harry always made everything look so easy.

The flames turned into a familiar shade of green, and Harry tilted forwards an inch. Right before he stepped into the fire, he halted abruptly and took a small step back, as if forgetting something.

“You _are_ the best, you know?” he told her with a wide smile. Even past the glare of his glasses, she could see his green eyes twinkling, and her heart warmed at the sight of her best friend so happy.

Though it had taken a while, moments like these— in which Harry reminded her of the boy she had befriended all those years ago, before he was burdened with the fate of the entire Wizarding World on his shoulders— were becoming increasingly commonplace as time stretched on after the war; Hermione promised herself she would cherish every single occurrence.

Then, as suddenly as the admiration in her heart appeared, the twinkle in Harry's eyes shifted into something more mischievous. “Also, read that article.”

Hermione made a frustrated noise over her tea. She knew he didn’t actually care about her reading the article, and was just trying to purposefully show up late to another monotonous staff meeting. Though Harry held immense respect for Headmaster McGonagall, his general distaste towards authority figures remained steadfast. Whatever lecture he might face for showing up late wasn’t enough to stop him from doing so.

Besides, it wasn’t as if McGonagall would fire him. 

“Go to work, Harry.” She glared at him again.

He replied with something that looked an awful lot like a pout before resigning, giving her a short wave as a goodbye. Bracing himself, he turned back towards the fireplace, saying, “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” in a tone laced with dread before stepping into flames and promptly disappearing.

With a large sigh, Hermione sat down in front of Harry’s empty mug and looked down at the paper.

* * *

_**SCORNED DEATH EATER DRACO MALFOY ATTEMPTS ARSON: ATONEMENT OR ASYLUM?** _

In another startling development from the former headquarters of the fallen Dark Wizard Voldemort, a small fire broke out at Malfoy Manor early last evening.

The flames are suspected to be the doing of none other than Draco Malfoy, who became the youngest wizard to join the ranks of Voldemort’s most loyal followers at age 16. The former Death Eater has retained a relatively low profile since the end of his Ministry-mandated 6-month house arrest, which was successfully completed last November. Sources close to us say that his mother, Narcissa Malfoy, was visiting her husband Lucius in Azkaban at the time. It is unclear what, if anything, was damaged in the fire. Aurors examined the scene shortly after and surprisingly found no traces of Dark Magic behind the small inferno.

Was this a crude attempt made by the youngest Death Eater in history to atone for the sins of his past, or the result of something more sinister? _The Daily Prophet_ will be following this story closely.

* * *

“Did you hear the news about Draco Malfoy?” Parvati murmured to Hermione during their lunch break. It had been a relatively slow morning, though one of her more difficult patients had tried to give her a rather nasty Stinging Hex in response to an exceptionally foul-tasting Skelegro.

Hermione sat down beside her coworker at their usual table, making an affirmative noise by way of a grunt. “I found it to be a waste of perfectly good article space, don’t you think? More media theatrics than anything substantial.”

Parvati twirled a noodle around her fork and rested her face on her other hand in contemplation.

“I suppose that’s one way to think about it,” she replied. “Still, Malfoy’s always been such a mystery. It seems strange that he’d be involved in a story like this at all.”

“They aren’t even sure if he started it, Parvati.”

The memory of roaring flames and burning _everywhere_ flickered briefly in Hermione’s mind again, just as it had when she read the article. She saw the image of Draco kneeling at the door of the Room of Requirement, with one less person at his side.

In an attempt to slow the quickening of her heartbeat, Hermione took a deep inhale through her nose and exhaled it softly, releasing the memory alongside the breath.

“Therein adding to the mystery,” Parvati said, oblivious to her coworker’s small bout of anxiety. “But he was still the only one at the Manor that day, and no one would’ve been able to get past the wards otherwise. Those ancient houses are equipped with ridiculous levels of security.”

Besides a handful of Aurors being allowed to rummage through their things every Saturday morning, Hermione thought. Ron was one of them, but he didn’t talk about Malfoy much. He rarely saw him at the Manor, he had told her and Harry once. Narcissa and their house-elf were the only ones he interacted with regularly.

( _“It’s— sad,” Ron admitted, even though it seemed painful for him to do so. “That huge house, with all of those awful… I mean, they brought it upon themselves, I know, but— surely there were some good memories, before? I can’t imagine either of them see those at all now.”)_

Though Parvati certainly knew of the weekly Auror raids on Malfoy Manor— anyone who read _The Prophet_ did— there was no need to bring them up at this moment.

“Well, as long as no one got hurt,” was what she settled for instead. It was a plain statement, merely meant to steer away from the direction Parvati had taken their conversation.

Approximately thirty minutes later, as Hermione reviewed the file on her newest patient and found the name _Draco Lucius Malfoy_ printed neatly at the top, she realized that the words now held an entirely different meaning.


	2. Percolate the Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all of the kudos and comments so far! I hope you all enjoy this first *real* chapter. 
> 
> Disclaimer(s): Chapter title is taken from Fiona Apple’s “Every Single Night”. Also, fuck terfs

* * *

_ “As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself. The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.” _

— **Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score**

* * *

It was reasonable to say that Hermione Granger was surprised by very little nowadays, with the universe throwing rather large, earth-shattering, life-threatening surprises her way for nearly a decade.

It was also reasonable to say that Hermione was very, very surprised when she flipped through the records of her newest patient and found that it was Draco Malfoy. The slight tear in the parchment’s upper right corner served as a testament to that.

She lingered outside the closed door to his designated hospital room, staring at his name scrawled onto the paper. The reason behind his admission was straightforward: a second-degree burn on his right arm. It offered no other details, but essentially confirmed that he had gotten hurt in last night’s fire.

Though just a few short hours ago it had seemed like Hermione was the only person on the planet interested in talking about anything that wasn’t Draco Malfoy, it was becoming increasingly impossible not to think of the article she’d read earlier that day, the gossip she heard littering the hallways, and— begrudgingly— her own growing curiosity about what on earth had happened last night at Malfoy Manor.

Harry was going to have an absolute field day once she came home and debriefed him about her workday. Maybe he wouldn’t be complaining much about his staff training, after all.

As other staff members shuffled behind her, caught up in the normal buzz of the hospital workday, Hermione realized that she’d been loitering outside of Draco Malfoy’s room for a little too long. Either someone in the hallway was going to notice that she hadn’t moved in over five minutes, or Malfoy was going to burst out of the door and demand an answer as to why he hadn’t been attended to yet. Hermione shuddered at the latter thought, attempted her friendliest face, and rapped her knuckles against the door three times as a courtesy gesture before entering.

As she stepped into the room, she found a familiar blonde man reclining on the bed with a rather vacant look on his face. He was staring at the wall opposite him, looking very much like he was not about to make a scene anytime soon.

Under the room's harsh lighting, his already-pale skin was so washed out he looked like a ghost. Hermione always thought it was rather ironic, how the conditions of a place meant for healing often made its inhabitants look even more sickly.

It had been almost a year since Hermione had last seen him— long enough ago for her to forget exactly how pointy his nose was, but short enough to remember that his hair was so platinum it was almost white. He barely glanced in her direction as she hovered next to the entrance, slowly closing the door behind her with a soft click.

“Malfoy,” she greeted, stepping a little closer to his bed, “What do we have here?”

At the sound of her voice, he turned to look at her, grey eyes steely against her own gaze. He blinked three times in rapid succession, as if he was trying to clear fog from his vision, then scanned her up and down.

“Granger." A hint of surprise bled through his steady voice.

His lips, which had been arranged in a fixed, horizontal line, curved downwards as he frowned in displeasure; it was a familiar expression on him. His brow furrowed to create two deep, vertical creases in the middle of his forehead, and his eyes narrowed slightly. As his lips parted to speak, Hermione braced herself for whatever discomfort was sure to occur.

“That horrendous shade of green is an insult to the color.”

Hermione bit down on her bottom lip to prevent an involuntary laugh from escaping her. The crushing weight she hadn’t realized was on her chest dissipated, and she exhaled steadily in its wake. Though she and Malfoy were no longer the sworn enemies they had once been, it was comforting to know that some things never changed. His criticism was only humorous because it was the truth— the lime green robes that all Healers donned were exceptionally garish, and being surrounded by the color had caused a few headaches in the early weeks of Hermione’s career.

“I’d much rather prefer if my robes were red,” she admitted, “but you probably wouldn’t like that much either."

He huffed in response but otherwise stayed silent, opting to drum his fingers methodically along the side of his bed frame instead. For a few moments, the soft, rhythmic sound— akin to that of a rapid heartbeat— was the only noise in the room.

As her eyes trailed to follow the movement, Hermione noted that he was only tapping the fingers of his injured right hand. The stark white bedsheets strewed over the lower part of his body still covered his uninjured left arm, and she was suddenly hyperaware of the Dark Mark branded onto his skin, mocking her under layers of fabric. Though it was unclear whether he was hiding his arm out of habit or courtesy, she was glad it wasn’t exposed.

Before her thoughts could dwell on such a minute detail any further, she gestured to his injury with a wave of her hand.

“Could I take a look at it, now?”

The tapping of his fingers ended abruptly, without even a stutter. Like a heartbeat thumping one second, completely gone the next.

Malfoy turned to stare at her with a raised eyebrow that was nearly identical to the look Harry had shot her earlier that morning. The message he was trying to convey was also the same: obviously.

“Do you ask all of your patients permission for treatment?” he drawled, his voice dripping in his signature aristocratic tone. Though the words he spoke were devoid of any tangible malice, she couldn’t help but think of the years of hurled insults he had afforded her when he was younger. It was difficult not to, when his drawl sounded almost identical to that of his youth, albeit a few tones deeper.

Hermione scoffed and drew closer, sitting down at the small stool near his bed. She signaled for him to outstretch his arm, and he complied silently.

As she unraveled the gauze wrapped around his forearm, she was greeted by the sight of angry, red blisters scattered across his pale skin. The image was jarring, but her only reaction was an unfastening of her wand from its holster and a mutter of a diagnostic spell. The diagnostic revealed that his injury was a potions burn rather than a thermal one, which prompted Hermione to think of the words Parvati had uttered during their lunch break. (Therein adding to the mystery, indeed.)

Technically speaking, the damage wasn’t horrible, but the blemish was ugly enough that she was sure it bothered him, and potions burns were hard to treat without leaving a scar.

She vanished the used gauze, summoned a new roll, and her mind drifted back to his Dark Mark. Branded on one arm, and burned in almost the exact same place on the other. His forearms would reflect something flawed onto the other every single time.

The scar on her own forearm grew itchy, and she gripped her wand a little tighter before lifting it above his injury to sanitize it. After it was thoroughly cleaned, she accio’ed a jar of specialty burn paste and spread it across his skin before massaging it in, trying to ignore the way his entire body stiffened under her touch. His aversion sent a strange sense of disappointment and sadness through her veins before she quickly tucked them away and righted herself. Hermione concluded that it would be stranger if he reacted any differently. And yet— she could still sense that nagging voice in the very back of her head. How she didn’t know him at all, not really.

“What happened?” she asked, before she could convince herself not to. She hoped, perhaps a little too late, that the question hadn’t come across as prying.

Judging from the irritated sigh that Malfoy let out, it definitely had.

“Surely you’ve read all about it,” he replied curtly.

The obvious disdain oozing in his voice elicited a tiny smile from Hermione.

“And surely you know that no actual information was given,” she said. “Once again, Rita Seeker’s journalistic talent leaves much to be desired.”

At her insult of the journalist, Malfoy’s lips twitched upwards for a brief second. Then, with equal swiftness, he rearranged his features back into a neutral expression. Feeling a little dizzy with the sight of Malfoy smirking at something she had said, even if it had only been for a moment, she realized that they shared something in common that wasn’t Hogwarts or the War: a hatred of Rita Seeker. Considering that they had such personal reasons for disliking the journalist, it was a fact equally amusing and bizarre.

Feeling a little brave after this realization, she threw out another question, this one more direct:

“Why did you wait until this morning to come into St. Mungo’s?”

His eyes shifted to examine her carefully out of his peripheral vision, and her hands stilled, suddenly feeling like an object of study. Having their roles reversed was a strange phenomenon. Did all of her patients feel this uncomfortable when she was attending to them?

“I was waiting to see how bad it got." The words came out tentatively, as if he was testing her. "I would’ve waited longer if it wasn’t for my mother insisting I come.”

Hermione nodded and resumed the circular movement of her thumbs, applying slightly more pressure than before. That made sense. After knowing just how far the depths of Narcissa Malfoy’s love for her son ran, she could picture the matriarch hovering over her only heir.

“Your mother made the right decision. The damage isn’t too severe, but treatment for potions burns differs from treatment for thermal burns. Few people can do it correctly on their own.”

She paused for a moment, contemplating just how far she could push him.

“It’s a potions burn,” was what she settled on, a question masked as a statement.

Though she was trying very hard not to look up at him, she could sense his eyes boring holes into her profile. He shifted abruptly under her hands, pulling his arm out from under her, and she felt his irritation in the way his body tensed before he even opened his mouth.

“Granger, drop the act and just stick your nose in my business like everyone else,” he snapped, his patience with her efforts at not-prying growing thin. “You Gryffindors were never good at subtlety.”

She scowled and reached out for his arm again, one hand wrapping around his wrist to hold him in place. He didn’t fight her, but she could feel his pulse thrumming in his veins, just under her thumb. As her other hand wrapped fresh gauze around his forearm, she fumbled slightly, forcing her to unravel a section and start over. She felt his breath puff over her shoulder as he scoffed.

“Fine.” Her cheeks were hot. “What happened?”

The room was quiet as she wrapped the rest of the bandage around him. As she focused on the sight of her own hand circling the thin fabric around and around his arm, covering the damaged skin below while she awaited a response, she had the strange thought this might be a metaphor for something. She just wasn't sure for what, or how.

The bandage ended in the middle of his palm, and Hermione quietly cast an adhesion charm. Still waiting for an answer, she placed her hands in her lap and looked up at him expectantly. Malfoy remained quiet, his eyes glued to his newly bandaged forearm. The silence extended for so long that she began contemplating whether it would be appropriate for her to leave and request a transfer immediately.

Malfoy cleared his throat loudly, and the sound of it cutting through the silence in the room was so abrupt Hermione flinched in surprise. Embarrassed at her reaction, she glanced over at Malfoy to see if he’d noticed, but his eyes were now trained on an invisible spot on the wall. Without moving them, he placed his newly dressed arm underneath the sheet so that both of his arms were covered, and finally spoke.

“I was doing some brewing," he said.

Hermione rolled her eyes at his obvious declaration, but straightened her back in anticipation of the intellectual direction this conversation was taking them.

“I figured as much, with it being a potions burn and all. Do you… work with potions?”

Though the papers frequently reported on Narcissa Malfoy’s efforts to restore their family name through charity work, they rarely mentioned Draco’s name. It seemed that even after the completion of his house arrest, he ventured out very rarely. It was logical, yes, that he had to do something to fill his time, but Hermione could hardly imagine Malfoy with a job, nor had she ever suspected it would be something so… innocent. Or intriguing.

He looked over at her, finally making eye contact, and shrugged once.

Hermione’s gaze settled on the corner of his mouth, where she found the barest trace of a smile as he pretended not to be amused at her obvious excitement over his studies. She extended him the same courtesy and pretended not to notice.

“In a way,” he said. “I’m planning on taking the Potions Master examination at the end of the year. I started studying for it during my— well, you know.”

Ah, yes, she did. She suspected there weren’t many people in the Wizarding World who didn’t know about the house arrest he’d been sentenced to during his Wizengamot trial. Besides, she had been there herself.

When Harry had heard of the Ministry’s plans to sentence Malfoy to Azkaban along with his father, he had reluctantly brought up the idea of testifying for a more lenient sentence to Hermione and Ron. He had planned to do it alone, but, as Hermione had pointed out, three members of the so-called Golden Trio made for even better odds. Ron was reluctant, but they were a team, after all. In the end, their efforts had allowed Malfoy to return to Hogwarts to complete his NEWTs, but the Ministry was adamant that he not go unpunished.

It was not, among many other things, something they ever really talked about.

A house arrest was reasonable, she had concluded. Much more so than Azkaban. She had done what she could and live with that on her conscience— and it seemed like Malfoy had made the best of it.

“That’s nice," she replied, the words tumbling out with a sincerity that took her by surprise. “You were always talented at potions.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, studying her again. Under the room’s harsh lighting, she could make out the slightest sign of a flush spreading across his face.

“Become one for flattery now, Granger?”

If it wasn’t for the ever-monotonous tone of his voice, Hermione might think he was teasing her. Her mouth opened to respond, but after realizing she didn’t know what to say, she closed it again and settled on ignoring his statement completely.

“What were you working on?” It served as both a deflection and a genuine inquiry; Hermione was nothing if not efficient.

Malfoy shifted slightly, and the movement caught her eyes. Though she’d always been observant, her job as a Healer had fine-tuned her vision to notice the smallest details in people’s behavior. And so, this talent meant that she noticed the way Draco Malfoy’s chest rose once, then tensed, as his breathing stilled in response. It was an interesting thing to observe, but it also felt wrong in this case, like an invasion of privacy. She wasn't meant to notice these things in him, and yet— she couldn't help but see them.

“Veritaserum,” he finally replied.

Hermione immediately wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion. Though it was considered of advanced difficulty, someone interested enough in potions to study it for the rest of their life should be able to brew Veritaserum without creating disaster. And she’d seen him make it successfully, years ago, when he was sixteen and nearly a corpse.

“Then how did this happen?” she asked, pointing to the arm now hidden under the covers. The question came out a little more bristling than she intended it to be. “We learned Veritaserum in sixth year.”

At that, something in Malfoy shifted. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he turned his head away from her, focusing his gaze at a tile on the floor. The muscles in his face stiffened even further. When combined with the way his cheeks hollowed slightly, making him look even more gaunt than he was, he resembled a statue— rigid and unyielding.

“That’s none of your business,” he declared.

His tone was deadly serious. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d ever heard him so severe, and it served as a reminder that there were limits to the extent of vulnerability that could be shared between two people with their history. She supposed Malfoy had reached the end of his.

But still— despite all of this, Hermione had a job to do, and now he was making it difficult. She was quite tired of Malfoy making her life difficult.

“Actually,” she said, pointing to her lime green robes, “it is my business. Now, how did that happen? I’m asking as your Healer.”

It was the truth. If the declaration led to an answer that satiated her own personal curiosity about the Manor fire, then so be it.

She expected him to snarl at her, but all he did was close his eyes. Even without being able to see them, Hermione could picture the frustration in his irises, dark and cloudy and grey.

“Fine,” he conceded, echoing what she had told him earlier.

A quiet noise of surprise left Hermione’s throat.

“I got— sometimes I get— distracted.”

“Distracted,” Hermione repeated slowly. “What do you mean?”

His eyes suddenly flashed open, as startling as an unannounced bolt of lightning. If the storm in his eyes was anything to go off of, he was toeing the line beyond frustration.

“Aren’t you supposed to be smart?” he spat. There was the anger she’d been anticipating.

It felt as if she had been waiting for an invitation to fight and he’d suddenly given her one. Against her better judgement, the irritation stewing in her stomach took the invitation greedily and flared to life.

“Don’t mistake me for an idiot, Malfoy,” she snapped, her voice wavering as she lost a little of her own control. “You know what I mean. It won’t do you any good to lie or avoid answering the question by insulting me.”

Malfoy inhaled quickly and loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose with so much force it reminded Hermione of a dam; it seemed that if he let go for even a second, there would be a violent outflow of emotions sure to end in disaster.

“I already fucking told you,” he said, his voice seething and slow, “I got distracted.”

He carefully removed his fingers from his face and flexed them, all vein and paper skin and bone. His eyes remained closed. “ _How is this relevant_?”

An air of repressed fury radiated off of him, his magic practically crackling in the atmosphere as he tried to rein his emotions in. It hovered in the space between them, laced with tension.

Hermione deflated slightly at Malfoy’s obvious efforts to keep his composure. Even if he was giving her a hard time, she’d been on the receiving end of far worse actions from other patients and still remained calm. She was clearly asking him to speak about something difficult.

Still. There was a certain amount of respect she ought to be offered.

“No need to curse, Malfoy.” Her voice was more controlled this time, but it remained firm. Her heartbeat was still thumping rapidly in her chest, and she barreled on in an effort to ignore it. “You said that you get distracted sometimes. I just need to know if there’s some pattern so I can make sure it’s not an issue.”

Malfoy slowly took another audible breath in, his nostrils flaring as he did so. It was an unsteady sound, visually matched with a slight tremor of his shoulders. As the breath left him, his shoulders dropped and weariness settled in his posture. Hermione recognized the resignation in his body, and felt something twist in the pit of her stomach as she realized that even Draco Malfoy had grown tired of fighting. She truly didn’t know him at all.

With one last shuddering exhale, he opened his eyes carefully and glanced sideways at her.

“I’m going to sound crazy,” he said through his teeth.

The self-conscious nature of his words took Hermione aback. The surprise manifested so quickly on her face that a few seconds passed before she realized she was staring at him blankly. Swallowing, she consciously softened her gaze.

“You won’t.” She shook her head gently, and forced herself to speak with the careful, practiced compassion of a Healer. “Listen. Anything you say to me will be confidential. It won’t get out to the press. I promise.”

He looked thoroughly unconvinced by her pledge to secrecy, which she couldn’t really fault him for, considering she had already thought of how she would bring this up to Harry tonight. It wasn’t exactly the same thing as blabbing to the press, but she imagined that Malfoy might consider it to be worse.

“Malfoy, I know that we have a bit of a—” her voice hitched against her will, “complicated history, but I’ll have you know that I have never— will never— let my personal affairs interfere with my professional work. If you're experiencing an issue, I need to know so I can do my job properly.”

He stared at her for another moment before sighing softly.

“Alright,” he said, though it wasn’t without a bit of a sneer. The sight of his expression was comforting in that it familiarized him, and she welcomed it selfishly, feeling thoroughly unfamiliar with the man seated across from her. “I see you haven’t tired of shoving your moral superiority in everyone’s face.”

Hermione was about to roll her eyes when the scowl vanished from Malfoy’s face, his features settling into a blank expression. She observed him carefully as his brow furrowed and his eyes darkened, transforming his irises from a kaleidoscope of silvers and blues into something more akin to a stone, slate grey and unmoving. When he spoke again, his voice was so flat and devoid of emotion that it nearly gave Hermione whiplash.

“Sometimes, I get this feeling.” His words were clipped at the ends, as if he was mentally taking count of every second he spoke, fighting against a limit.

“It’s hard to describe,” he continued. “I’d say it’s similar to the feeling I get when I perform occlumency, but it’s more. It feels like I’m somewhere else. Somewhere different from where I really am.” He paused. “Does that make sense?

In the small sterile room, it felt like the world flipped upside down. There was absolutely no other explanation for why Draco Malfoy would seek confirmation from her in this reality.

“Um, yes. A little,” Hermione replied honestly, nodding her head slowly. She shifted in her seat, feeling uneasy at the strange atmosphere this conversation had created for them. “And are you, uh— are you practicing occlumency right now?”

He turned to look at her abruptly, grey eyes nearly glacial in their stillness, and she wondered, not for the first time in their short few minutes together, if she had crossed a boundary.

“It’s okay if you are,” she blurted quickly. “It’s just that you seem different.” She grimaced at her own frankness, but it would do her no good to backtrack now.

Malfoy continued staring at her for a few moments, then reached up to brush away a piece of hair that had fallen in his face.

“I am,” he admitted, though it didn’t exactly come off as an admission, just two words pieced together that happened to leave his mouth.

“Oh,” Hermione noted, understanding settling into her features. _Oh_. So this was what occlumency in practice looked like. It was no wonder why Harry had been so bad at it. “I see. May I ask why that is?”

He blinked. “I don’t know how else to talk about this.”

She stilled for a moment, taking in the weight of his words, then nodded.

“I understand,” she said, reaching for her clipboard and quill to take some notes on his condition and avoid looking at him. The last time she’d felt this uncomfortable was the discussion she’d had with Molly Weasley after breaking up with Ron.

“You can continue. You were, uh, talking about how you get distracted sometimes,” she explained, unsure if she needed to remind him, but feeling like she did. Talking to Draco Malfoy when he wasn’t occluding was difficult enough, and now she desperately needed a how-to guide.

He picked up where he left off without missing a beat.

“It’s usually manageable,” he replied. “Uncomfortable, yes, but I can still function. I know where I am, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

Even though he was looking at her, Hermione felt as if she was a ghost. It was easy to miss, but now that she knew what was happening, she couldn’t help but be keenly aware of the way his eyes were focused on something that wasn’t quite there, though it landed somewhere in her general direction.

“I see,” she responded, eyes flitting between him and her notes nervously. She felt torn between her own personal discomfort and professional concern. “You said it was usually manageable. Was it different last night?”

He gave her a short nod.

“I could feel it happening, and then I blinked, and it turned out I’d blown up my potion and set half of the room on fire. I was most likely standing there for several hours.”

Hermione scribbled on her parchment so rapidly she could barely read her own handwriting. _Prolonged dissociation - fugue state? Extreme detachment from reality_

“When did this start happening?” she questioned.

Malfoy hesitated for a moment. When he blinked, Hermione saw the tiniest flash of uncertainty in his eyes, a slight crack in the shield he’d created for himself.

“A few months after the War,” he said, impassiveness settling back into his features.

Hermione was quiet for a few moments as she contemplated what he had revealed to her. Her head was swimming with a thousand questions. Taking advantage of the situation, figuring that the man behind her racing thoughts wouldn’t react either way, she sighed loudly in order to clear her head.

With a little more focus, she attempted to theorize an array of explanations behind what Malfoy was experiencing: a memory charm, residual effects of a curse, or a general lack of magical influence altogether. She’d seen countless patients affected by the war who were suffering from trauma that manifested in a variety of ways.

She, herself, frequently ran on little to no sleep, a habit she’d developed after waking up far too many nights from violent nightmares. The same went for Harry; their restless nights were a part of the reason they’d moved in together in the first place.

And it made sense, that Draco Malfoy would face ramifications for a war he’d been thrust into as a child and lost. But she never suspected that she would bear such intimate witness to that experience.

“Okay," she said, her voice even. "Are there any other physical sensations besides the feelings of detachment?”

He shook his head mechanically, once to the left, once to the right. “No.”

Placing her quill down, she braced herself for what she was about to ask him. In light of his confession, she needed to run some more diagnostics on him. But for those to work properly, he needed to let down his occlumency shields.

“Do you mind if I run a few diagnostic spells? I only did them on your burn, before,” she explained. “I want to see if there’s anything else, but you’ll have to stop occluding for them to work properly. The shields interfere with the way the spells work.”

He blinked once, twice.

“Is that okay with you?” she tried again.

He stared at her for another moment. Then, as methodically as he’d put his shields up, he inhaled and began taking them down.

With morbid fascination, Hermione watched as his eyebrows drew together in concentration and he chipped away at the stone in his eyes. Piece by piece, slivers of shifting blue and grey hues reentered his irises until the solid glacier melted into liquid, leaving only a trace of protective ice in its wake.

“So you do ask permission every time, then,” he scoffed after he was done, characteristic haughtiness back in his voice. “How noble.” He turned his body towards her, allowing her easier access to do her spellwork, but avoided her eyes.

If someone had told Hermione this morning that there would be a day where she longed to interact with Draco Malfoy without any barriers, she would have laughed in their face. But it seemed like that day had come, as she felt her discomfort lessen in the wake of his return.

“Thank you,” she told him quietly. “I appreciate it.” She swallowed heavily.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for making you,” she continued, fighting to quell the knot already reappearing in her throat, “—uncomfortable.”

He glowered at her in response, an expression that clearly said he did not want to talk about it.

She took the hint, and the pair of them remained quiet as Hermione ran a series of diagnostic spells over him. She was expecting to find the remnants of a curse, of Dark Magic, of anything. When she came up with nothing, she pulled back and frowned.

“I can’t seem to find anything,” she admitted, frustration gnawing at her insides. “Could you think of anyone who might curse you using an undetectable?”

Malfoy let out a sharp, caustic laugh that scraped at her eardrums in return.

“I can think of hundreds of people who’d love to curse me,” he answered matter-of-factly, as if he had memorized a list of them. “But hardly any of them could pull off an undetectable except for you.”

The bluntness in his voice, combined with the quasi-compliment he had given made Hermione sputter with surprise. She kept her head down as she scribbled out the “undetectable curse?” in her notes to prevent a hysterical laugh from escaping her. This whole situation was becoming increasingly bizarre with each passing second.

“Who’s the one using flattery now?” She couldn’t meet his statement with the same detachment he offered, and her voice came out slightly strangled instead. “And besides, I wouldn’t curse you. Now, a hex or a jinx? Maybe.”

Malfoy snorted softly. The sound of it— so lighthearted and purely human, and of course he would manage to make such an undignified noise seem elegant— coming from him made Hermione’s brain short circuit.

Startled at his response, she closed her eyes in an effort to recalibrate her thoughts and prevent herself from staring at him again. She’d seen more sides to Draco Malfoy today than in the entire decade she’d known him, and it was utterly overwhelming.

She took a breath in, held it, and exhaled.

She opened her eyes, feeling a little more grounded, and focused on the notes in front of her. Right. The dilemma that was Malfoy’s medical condition was also complex, but at least it was something she could understand, if not now, then sometime in the future, which was more than she could say for his emotions.

She was just about to ask him how frequent his episodes were when a luminescent sparrow flew into the room, fluttering around Hermione. She recognized it as the Patronus of her supervisor, Roberts.

“There’s been a few people involved in a Quidditch accident, Healer Granger,” said the sparrow, in a flitting, bird-like voice. “Quite a few broken bones. Report to the fifth floor."

Hermione groaned loudly at the same time Malfoy squinted and exclaimed, “What kind of fucking Patronus is a bloody sparrow?”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, standing up hastily from the seat beside him. “I’ll try and check back in if my shift hasn’t ended.”

With a grimace still on his face, he waved a dismissive hand at her as she hurried to exit the room.

“No need,” he replied harshly. “Go save the world, or whatever you bloody Gryffindors do.”

She studied him for a moment, with one hand resting on the doorknob behind her, and noticed that his cheeks and the tips of his ears were tinged pink.

“Alright, then.” Though she couldn’t tell whether he was blushing from embarrassment or anger, she wouldn’t push him any further today. They’d both been through enough for the time being. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t mess with your burn in the meantime.”

He grunted in response as she exited the room, her mind already in two places at once.

* * *

By the end of her shift, Hermione concluded, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, that Quidditch was an absolutely ridiculous pastime. Why so many wizards and witches loved an activity that sent at least one patient to St. Mungo’s on the daily was beyond her.

Though she never cared much for the sport to begin with, her attitude had soured even further since her Hogwarts graduation. She was no longer frequently exposed to hordes of excited students, cheering crowds, and the general unadulterated joy that the activity seemed to elicit in her closest friends. Instead, her days now consisted of treating a large number of ghastly injuries brought on by Quidditch.

In what seemed like the universe playing a cruel trick on her, she was assigned to care for Adrian Pucey— as if she hadn’t had enough interaction with former Slytherins for the day. He was in so much pain that he barely spoke to her, which she silently thanked Merlin for.

It took the rest of her shift and then some to regrow all of the bones Pucey had broken. The process was more time-consuming than anything else, so her mind— annoying, stupidly curious thing that it was— had plenty of opportunities to think back to Malfoy.

What Malfoy had called “being distracted” was clearly dissociation. Though Hermione had only experienced the phenomenon briefly, herself— moments after being tortured in the Malfoy Manor’s drawing room, nonetheless— she knew enough about it to recognize the signs. But Malfoy’s case teetered on the edge of something too extreme to be completely nonmagical, and too mild to be the aftereffect of an undetectable.

Her thoughts frequently circled back to Malfoy’s use of occlumency. He had briefly mentioned that his dissociation felt similar to his occlumency, and the way he had acted while occluding seemed to verify that. There was a strong possibility that the two were related, but she wasn’t sure how.

By the time Hermione screwed the cap on the now-empty bottle of Skelegro, she already had a long list of questions prepared to ask Malfoy. She would also ask Harry to look for a few books in the Hogwarts library, too— it certainly wouldn’t hurt for him to become more acquainted with the place, considering he was a professor there.

“I’ll be back to discharge you tomorrow,” she told Pucey, who was already half-asleep from a mixture of pain and exhaustion. He mumbled something unintelligible in response, and she shuffled out of the hospital room, scowling at the sight of the sky darkening outside, exhaustion from the day’s events finally settling into her bones. 

Ignoring the objections of her aching body, she walked quickly through the hospital corridors in pursuit of the nearest Floo, eager to get home and rest. She reached it in record time, only taking a few seconds to stop and catch her panting breath before tossing the green powder in and stepping inside.

“Harry James Potter,” she yelled, before the familiar sight of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place had even fully materialized in her vision, “you will not believe the day I’ve just had.”


	3. Trickle Down the Spine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry that this update is almost three weeks late! It's taking me a lot longer than I thought to write/edit to a point where I'm comfortable with posting (trust me when I say my first drafts are horrendous), and I'm also in the middle of moving cities, so... life. This chapter is very dialogue heavy (as was the last one), but from here on out they should be a little less so. I've also changed the story summary to a more fitting scene. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy! 
> 
> Warning: This chapter contains a description of a PTSD flashback.

* * *

_ "You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions." _

— **Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score**

* * *

“Merlin,” Harry breathed, running a hand through his hair. “And I thought _my_ day was bad.”

As soon as Hermione had gotten home, she’d told Harry about her workday. Unsurprisingly, he’d had plenty of questions regarding Malfoy: Was he the one who’d set that fire off? Had he been trying to send a message? Did she think he was hiding something? Was he treating her alright? Would she feel better if Ron set up an Auror detail? And so on.

Answering Harry’s questions had allowed her to reflect upon one of the strangest interactions of her life, but doing so was also draining. When she was finally done, her mind was as exhausted as her body.

She was now stretched out horizontally across their grey floral couch, one of the few pieces of furniture in the house they’d never bothered to update upon moving in, which had maybe been a mistake. The cushions were stiff and uncomfortable as ever, Hermione noted, feeling more like she was lying on top of a wooden board than a sofa. She couldn’t comprehend how her younger self had spent an entire month sleeping on the blasted thing.

“It wasn’t as bad as it was… strange,” she corrected, rolling her shoulders backwards to relieve the soreness that had settled there, “and tiring.”

Harry gave her a sympathetic look and sighed from his seat at a small wooden table, located where a piano had once stood.

“You’ve been assigned to take care of two Slytherins in one day— one of whom is Malfoy, and he sounds like a bloody wreck.” His voice landed somewhere between consternation and amusement.

A sharp twinge of guilt ran through Hermione in response to Harry’s comment. She burrowed her body further into the couch in an effort to quell it, as if the shifting of her skin against the harsh polyester cushions would scrub her free of the emotion entirely. It didn’t take Divination to predict that Malfoy wouldn’t be pleased if he learned that she’d told Harry, a person who he’d once considered his lifelong enemy, about his deeply personal struggle with the aftermath of the War. 

She tried to remind herself that the only thing she’d promised Malfoy was to not tell the press about his condition, but justifying her actions on such a technicality did nothing to assuage the rising shame she felt in her chest. Hermione usually had no trouble telling Harry about her interactions with patients, but their history with Malfoy made it different in the same way it made everything with him different. 

She had never seen her former classmate, once full of self-righteousness and bravado, so unsure of himself, and that included the time he’d nearly thrown up on the carpet of the Hogwarts library in front of her. She still didn’t feel bad about the way she’d turned his apology down then, but this time, he’d been vulnerable with her in a way she could empathize with— entrusted her with something she would’ve had trouble telling even her closest friends— and she’d gone and told the last person on earth he would want to share this information with.

With a start, Hermione wondered if Malfoy had even told anyone else about his recurring issue. His mother most likely knew— based on what she knew about them and the way he spoke about her freely, they seemed close— but did anybody else? Did he even have anyone else to tell?

The mere thought that she might be the only person he’d told besides his own mother caused a weight to settle in Hermione’s chest, heavy with the significance of knowing.

“He’s just… struggling like everyone else,” she finally replied, unable to manage anything else. Before Harry responded, she continued, not wanting to discuss it further, “Please remember to look for those books I mentioned.”

Harry's brows knitted together slightly and his lips thinned for a moment. Hermione recognized it as the look he gave her whenever she did or said something he didn’t quite understand but wouldn’t question. Then, the expression fell from his face, and he let out a tsk. “I’ll look, but I can’t promise you I’ll be able to find them. The library is hard to navigate without you there, and I’m bloody terrified of Pince.”

She was torn between the urge to roll her eyes at his incompetence or breathe a sigh of relief at his dismissal of her remark about Malfoy. 

Sometimes, Harry’s refusal to push her— his desire for the air around them to always remain untroubled, and good, and companionable— annoyed her more than any stupid thing he might say. But tonight, as her mind was swirling with confusion and her body was heavy with exhaustion, she was grateful for it.

“Thank you,” she told him, opting to ignore Harry’s casual suggestion that he might turn up empty-handed. She knew that he’d approach the librarian and ask her for help if that was what it came down to, because Harry would always do what it took, at least for others. Pince was all bark and no bite, anyway.

Harry nodded at her softly, then tilted his head in silent observation. “Have you eaten anything?” he asked, gentle with concern. He picked up his fork from the table and waved it around, gesturing wildly at something Hermione couldn’t see. “I can’t finish all of this.”

She shifted and craned her neck over to look at the table more closely. From this angle, she could make out the image of what looked like noodles on his plate.

With only a trace of disbelief in her voice, she asked, “You cooked?” Of the two of them, Harry was— surprisingly— the better chef, but the two of them opted for take-out for dinner more often than not.

Harry attempted a casual shrug, but the prideful smile on his face gave him away. “I’m no Molly Weasley, but I’m not completely useless, you know.”

Hermione chuckled as she settled her head back onto the couch. “Could you save me some?” she managed to say through a large yawn. “I’m too tired to move.” 

Then, unable to fight against the temptation of rest any longer, she closed her eyes with a content sigh. The onslaught of stimulation that came with vision subsided, and the relief that washed over her was immediate, like a flame being extinguished by a steady stream of water. For the first time in months, she felt as if she might be able to get more than a few hours of sleep.

Hermione heard Harry make an affirmative noise as the amorphous shapes of light behind her eyelids fixed itself into a steady plane of darkness. Several minutes or hours later, she couldn’t really tell, she felt a warm blanket drape over her body, its weight comforting against her chest, and she drifted off to sleep in the sitting room.

* * *

When Hermione’s body hit the ground, the only thought she could manage was that the floor was freezing cold. The harsh impact of her bones meeting the ground caused a loud, clapping noise to fill the room with a terrible echo. Somewhere, someone cried out. She was grateful for the sound; it dulled the strangled gasp that made its way out of her throat. 

It was so cold. Though she was dressed in multiple layers, she could feel the crisp chill of the winter air seep through the large windows that lined the room; it permeated the expanse underneath her, filled her entire being. She was trembling so violently she could feel the bones rattling in her body.

And then— warmth. Steady and slow, trickling down her hand from a spot on her arm. She didn’t dare look down to see. There was no need to, she knew what it was. This was a sensation borne out of the same thing: it was both a dream and a memory. 

Some days, Hermione was certain that she could be Obliviated for life, lose every fragment of herself, and she would still be able to picture the thin rivulets of red as they made their way down her skin, gathered in small pools on the floor, and ruined the marble tile. They left stains in her mind, too. 

Her eyes flashed up instead, and they met something grey, as still and icy as a glacier. Then, the feeling of frost latched onto her spine; crystalline shards made their way up each of her vertebrae, as sharp and methodical as a spider’s crawl.

The crawling sensation stopped. She felt something hovering over the back of her neck, the sensitive skin there buzzing with anticipation and fear. There was nothing to do but wait for the inevitable to happen. 

The last thing she saw were two pools of silver as the ice finally, _finally_ grabbed ahold of her, and tugged her into darkness. 

* * *

Hermione awoke with a start so violent that she nearly fell onto the floor. Her breath was coming out in short gasps, and her throat was so dry she knew that if she tried to make a sound, she would choke on it.

Blinking rapidly, she waited for her vision to adjust to her surroundings, willing the shifting shadows lining the room to materialize into shapes that were solid and familiar with each forceful opening and closing of her eyes.

Her hands clutched at the blanket pooled around her waist with so much force she thought her fingernails might tear the fabric. _You are home, you are safe, she is dead, she cannot hurt you ever again_ , she chanted silently in her head, like a prayer, until the pounding fear in her chest gradually subsided, a tidal wave ebbing on the shore.

The terror coiled in her body gradually unspooled itself, giving way to annoyance once she glanced down at her wristwatch to read the time: it was just past 4 am. By now, she knew that any attempt to go back to sleep would be futile, even though her eyelids were still heavy.

With a small sigh, she stood up from the couch and quietly shuffled to her bedroom. There was no light peeking out from under Harry’s bedroom door, so she was extra cautious in her movements, lest she make a noise and wake him.

She slipped into her bedroom silently, cast a silencing charm, and sat down at her desk. For a few, blissful seconds, her mind was completely blank, still shocked by her sudden awakening. Then, the inevitable occurred.

The remnants of her dream prodded at her thoughts, causing pinpricks of phantom pain to stab at the scar on her arm, the one that ensured her body would always remember, even if her mind did its best to forget. As she took a deep breath in to steady herself, the air rattled against her ribcage wildly, like a trapped bird flapping its wings. Her exhale came out as a small, strangled sob that clawed its way out of her chest.

With great frustration, Hermione took the heels of her hands and rested them against her closed eyes, as if putting a bit of pressure there would stop her from crying.

Though it had been months since she’d last had a nightmare, it wasn’t difficult to figure out what had triggered their reappearance. The vivid image of Malfoy’s glassy eyes burned behind her eyelids, the memory of them made even clearer by her dream.

She briefly wondered if it would be reasonable to request a transfer, but knew, just as quickly as the thought appeared in her mind, that she wouldn’t go through with such an action. No, she was much too curious about Malfoy and his condition. The idea of it was absurd: she’d had one conversation with him, the first she’d shared with him in over a year, and now she wanted to know what was wrong with him probably just as badly as he did.

Not _wrong_ with him, a tiny voice in her head chastised, and Hermione nearly laughed out loud. No, his condition was not something that made him flawed— that would be unfair, and ignorant— but god knew he had plenty of other shortcomings.

* * *

“You’re up early,” Harry noted as he walked into the kitchen, fingers rubbing away the sleep in his eyes.

“I fell asleep earlier than usual,” Hermione reminded him, nodding towards the skillet full of eggs that she’d left on the stove. He didn’t need to know about the nightmare she’d had; it would only make him worry pointlessly. “Thanks for the blanket.”

Harry beamed at her as he summoned a plate. “Thanks for breakfast. Are you ready for work today?” 

She made a face of disgust as she sat down at the table with a cup of coffee in her hands. “Please don’t remind me.” 

Though she wasn’t going to request a transfer, she also wasn’t looking forward to facing Malfoy again, especially not with the nightmare she’d just experienced. An involuntary shudder down her neck as she recalled the way his eyes had looked during his occlumency, and how similar they were to the ones in her dream— hopefully, he wouldn’t feel the need to use it again.

“I thought you said it wasn’t bad,” Harry offered through a mouthful of eggs, moving to sit beside her.

“Not bad isn’t the same thing as enjoyable. Just because Malfoy and I can be alone in the same room without killing each other doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it,” she explained, suddenly upset that she had already finished her breakfast. Her fingers itched with the need to stab a fork into something.

She moved to take a large sip from her mug instead and nearly spat it out the moment the liquid hit her tongue.

“God, I don’t know how you drink this stuff black. It’s horrid.”

“You’re drinking coffee?” He peered over to look inside her cup, frowned, and moved back to examine her with a furrowed brow. “Are you alright?” he asked, in the same manner that one might question a person suspected of being under Polyjuice.

“I thought I might need the extra caffeine this morning,” she grumbled. “Like I said, I’m not looking forward to going to work.”

Harry’s eyes were full of pity as he gave her a sympathetic squeeze on the shoulder. “You could always call in sick?” The suggestion couldn’t even leave Harry’s mouth without a laugh; he might as well have told her to quit her job altogether.

Hermione shot him an unamused look, which he returned with an easy grin.

“It was worth a try. Here.” Harry flicked his hand, and her mug traveled to him in a smooth whoosh. He was getting better at wandless magic every day. “I’ll make you another cup with more cream and sugar.”

* * *

By the time Hermione finished her first task of the day, it was well into the late afternoon. The receptionist in charge of processing Adrian Pucey’s discharge paperwork had— rather ironically, given Harry’s words earlier that day— called out sick, leaving Hermione to do the task herself despite never having dealt with the hospital filing system before. Such was the life of a Healer at the woefully understaffed St. Mungo’s. 

After trudging up the set of stairs that led the filing room basement to the ground floor for artifact accidents, Hermione navigated the hallways at a pace that teetered on the edge of a jog, her obnoxious lime green robes swishing violently around her legs with every step. On her way, she passed Parvati sorting through a cart of potions, who barely managed to raise a hand in greeting before Hermione announced, “Can’t talk, running late, sorry!”

Once she reached the door to Malfoy’s room, she was practically panting with exertion. Her knuckles rapped against his door in a percussive rhythm before she flung it open in haste, a far cry from the way she’d loitered outside of his room yesterday. 

“Hello, Malfoy.” The words came out a little breathless.

The blonde-haired wizard peered up at her over a pair of thin wire-rimmed rectangular glasses. His legs were bent in a position that allowed a book— _Advanced Principles and Practices of Potioneering_ , the spine read— to perch on top of his knees. Someone must have come and visited him after she’d left yesterday, because she hadn’t noticed the book or glasses before. She definitely would’ve remembered seeing them.

The light flush on Hermione’s face grew ten shades deeper. It was bad enough that she was hurrying to take care of Malfoy; now, as she stood in front of him, her physical state in stark juxtaposition to his relaxed, scholarly appearance, her ego felt destroyed beyond repair.

“Granger,” he said, sounding more annoyed than usual. “How nice of you to show up.”

Hermione felt herself grimace involuntarily. “My apologies, Malfoy,” she ground out through her teeth, “I got held up with something, but came as soon as I could.”

“Hmm.” He tore his attention away from his book to scan her down in a manner so clinical it made her feel like a bottle of lacewing flies before removing his glasses and tucking them into his collar. When he looked back up at her, his eyes glinted with amusement.

It suddenly felt rather ridiculous that these were the same eyes that had haunted her dreams just a few hours ago. They didn’t seem so scary now.

The book on Malfoy’s knees snapped closed with a sharp move of his hands. He placed the title on the small table beside his bed, and extended his legs to stretch out in front of him, long and languid. “Apology accepted.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “How gracious,” she replied bluntly, sitting down in the chair next to him. Her hand reached out towards his injured arm, her palm facing up in expectation. “How’s your burn doing today?”

“Fine.” He moved to rest his forearm in her wrist. To her surprise, he didn’t flinch at all when his skin met hers. “A little itchy, but that might have something more to do with the sandpaper that I’m currently wearing.”

“I’ll be sure to request that your hospital robes are made out of unicorn’s hair next time,” Hermione quipped, biting her lip to prevent herself from smiling at his sarcasm. Honestly, his insults were quite funny when they weren’t directed at her or her friends— it was an annoying realization. “But your burn being itchy is good. It means it’s healing.” 

“I haven’t even left yet, and you’re plotting my return.”

The gauze peeled off his skin easily, and Hermione hummed in satisfaction at what she saw under it: his skin was still red, but his blisters had lost all their pus, and a thin layer of dermis had grown over his burn.

“You actually might be good to go very soon,” she replied, applying a thin coating of burn paste over the area. “It’s healing very quickly.”

Malfoy arched a pale eyebrow. “Oh?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

She nodded. “The rest of the healing process is low maintenance enough that it can be done at home. As long as...” she trailed off, trying to figure out how to approach the subject in a way that wouldn’t push him into the abyss of defensive anguish he’d entered yesterday.

“As long as what?” he asked, in a practiced tone that showcased all the years he’d demanded things and received them promptly.

Hermione gnawed at her bottom lip. “Your, uh, dissociation is managed properly.”

“My what?”

The thin layer of skin split under her teeth; her tongue flicked out to taste a hint of blood. “Your dissociation,” she repeated, more firmly this time.

Steeling her nerves, she glanced up to find that he was doing that— thing again, with the narrowed eyes and intense stare. Examining her. Sizing her up. She frowned and averted her gaze.

“We’re going to have to talk about it,” she said. Her heart began knocking at her chest, politely reminding her that a small issue might arise during this conversation. “I’d also—” the knocking increased in urgency, losing some of its subtlety, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t occlude, but if you need to in order to talk about it, I’ll understand.”

Her request was met with a suffocating silence; the only noise she heard was the whooshing of blood as her heart made its way up to pulsate in her ears.

She dropped her hands to rest at the edge of his mattress, leaving his burn temporarily forgotten. “Actually,” she said, suddenly feeling very self-conscious, “It’s nothing.” The last thing she wanted to do was explain herself to him. “Forget it.”

“You can’t just boss me around and then tell me to forget about it, Granger.”

“It’s nothing.” What had she been thinking? Of course he was going to ask questions. “I said forget it.”

“I told you,” he said. “I told you what I didn’t want to tell you, so it’s really only fair that—”

“That’s different,” she replied quickly, though the guilt from last night was creeping back in, and he was making a good point. “I’m your Healer. It was for a reason. Which reminds me, we should really—”

“I think I have a right to know the reason you’re demanding I stop—”

“Malfoy.” She was practically begging at this point. Had it been any other day, she never would’ve allowed herself to speak to Draco Malfoy with such desperation in her voice, but she truly didn’t have it in her to explain that the reason she didn’t want him to occlude was because she’d had a nightmare involving his eyes, and being tortured within an inch of her life on the floor of his childhood home.

“I’m overworked, I haven’t slept, and I’ve just spent an hour in the basement trying to figure out the bloody filing system. I really don’t want to talk about it. I just— could you not be an arse for a few moments, please?” The words tumbled out of her mouth at a fierce velocity, desperate to be freed under the stress that had accumulated during the past twenty-four hours. “I want to talk to you about your dissociative episodes, and I’d like you to be—” she waved her hand around, “—here for it. That’s all. You can do it if you really want.”

The room fell into a quiet so thick that Hermione found herself struggling to breathe. A mix of shame and mortification quickly rose up in her, staining her cheeks scarlet, as she realized that she’d cracked in front of Draco Malfoy.

God, she’d even told him _please_.

This was ridiculous. She should’ve requested a transfer the moment she’d been assigned to him. There was a clear conflict of interest between them, just as there had always been. Hermione had thought that things were different now, but maybe she’d been putting too much trust in him, because he certainly didn’t seem to care whether or not she died of embarrassment in front of him, seeing as _he still hadn’t responded—_

“Granger,” he said as if reading her mind, and the softness of his voice startled her just as much as the interjection itself. “Are you practicing a wandless hex on me?”

Hermione blinked, and the knot in her throat dropped into her stomach as she snapped out of her thoughts. She didn’t realize she’d been staring at his burn, still half-exposed in her neglect, this entire time.

In a slow, listless motion, she picked the roll of gauze that had been forgotten at his side and resumed wrapping his arm in silence. Though she knew Malfoy was waiting for her to respond, her throat felt too dry to make a sound, just as it had when she’d woken up from her dream this morning.

“So,” he said, after it was clear that she wasn’t going to speak first. His voice was louder this time. “You wanted to discuss...”

Hermione’s eyes widened, and she looked up at him carefully. His brow was furrowed in concentration, and he was speaking very deliberately, as if one wrong word slipping from his tongue might cause him to combust.

He was trying, she noted. He was trying, just as he had been yesterday. Maybe she hadn’t been wrong after all.

“I wanted to continue what we were talking about yesterday,” she finished for him, having finally found her voice. Though she was done wrapping his burn, her fingers lingered on top of the gauze that covered his skin. “I don’t feel comfortable sending you home if you’re still at risk of hurting yourself.”

Malfoy scoffed. “I’m not going to off myself.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she sighed in frustration. “I meant that if you don’t get your dissociation—” Malfoy cringed beside her, “under control, then you’re going to be back in here before you know it.”

“And it might be something a lot worse than a small burn,” she added. Then, suddenly realizing that her hand was still on top of him, she withdrew herself and scooted her chair a few centimeters back.

Malfoy’s eyes were trained on her as he said, “This has been happening to me for years. The other day was just— I just let things get out of control. I’m fine.”

“And if things get out of control again?” she pressed. “Aren’t you studying for a Potions Mastery? How do you think you’re going to pass your practical if you can’t even brew Veritaserum without—”

“Granger.” His voice was dangerously low, in stark contrast with the way he’d spoken to her just moments ago.

“I’m just saying you can’t _will_ your way out of this, Malfoy,” she said, tearing her eyes away from his angry stare. Perhaps she’d gone a little too far with that last statement, but she was trying to make a point. At least he hadn’t lost his temper. “You went into a fugue state the other day. That’s very serious.”

“Then what do you suggest, hmm?” He tossed his hands up in the air. “I’d rather set myself on fire than go to fucking Janus Thickey—”

“What— _when did I ever suggest_ —”

“I’m mental, Granger. I get it.” His voice cut through hers, razor sharp, as if he had no other choice but to turn himself into a weapon if she was going to treat him like a piece of broken glass. Hermione felt her shoulders stiffen, then deflate a fraction.

“You’re not mental,” she said quietly. “It’s just… a little complicated, is all.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Treatment is difficult,” she admitted. “The mind is complex, and magical healing isn’t always the most helpful when it comes to these matters. In your case, there’s no spell or potion that—” 

As her eyes caught the sight of Malfoy’s book still resting on the side table, the sentence screeched to an abrupt halt.

Something about the title had set off a switch in her head: _Advanced Principles and Practices of Potioneering_. Yes, Hermione reminded herself, Malfoy was studying potions. He was good at potions.

Tendrils of a thought appeared in her mind, prodding her towards the edge of a precipice.

Malfoy started to speak, and Hermione held up a hand to silence him. A disbelieving scoff filled the room before it descended into quiet.

“I’m thinking,” she announced loudly, her hand still in the air.

The bed squeaked softly as Malfoy shifted to rest on his elbows, the sound of it obscuring his laugh. “A recent development, I’m sure.”

There was no response. Hermione had barely heard him at all, too deep in thought to process anything else.

Her mind worked its way to grab ahold of the seed that had just been planted there; she split it open and took it apart piece by piece.

Hermione had expressed a natural proclivity towards organization at a young age. It was how she made sense of her world, which had been hard to understand at times, especially given the whole magic-is-real-and-you’re-a-witch situation. She found solace in the fact that most problems— big and small, magical and Muggle— could be broken down into parts, which could then be compartmentalized into lists. This was how she operated before making a large decision: she broke it down into a mental list of pros and cons.

One might think that given her track record of making foolish, dangerous decisions, Hermione would admit to flaws in this methodology. In her mind, however, the real reason behind her poor decisions was attributed to an entirely different common denominator— the name of a loved one on the _pros_ side. (More often than not, it was Harry’s name, but she couldn’t exactly fault him for that now, could she?)

She’d throw all logic and reason out of the window if it benefitted her friends and family. That was just who she was. It was a trait equally important and valid as the version of her that drafted the lists and broke down the issues.

So there had really been no issue with her methodology until now.

Hermione was currently facing a bit of a dilemma, because Draco Malfoy certainly did not fall into the categories of friend, family, or loved one. In fact, his name existed quite clearly on the _cons_ side. Yet she was still about to make a very foolish decision.

With a painful sense of awareness, she brought her lifted hand down to the steady herself at the edge of his bed, and told him, “We should work together.”

He blinked at her owlishly.

“What was that?” he replied, shifting the weight of his torso from his elbows to his hands. The change in position allowed him to lean forward, closer to her, as if a few centimeters difference would help him hear more clearly. “I think I need to be treated for a hearing problem, too, because I thought you just said—”

“You heard me perfectly well,” she sniffed. Her back straightened against the chair. “We should work together.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to provide more details than that.”

“We should work together to create a potion that could help you,” she explained. “There’s none that exist right now, but we could do it. We could make one. Your potion knowledge, my healing knowledge— well, I mean, I’ve got a bit of both— It wouldn’t necessarily be a cure, but it could help you manage your episodes better, or—”

“Granger, could you slow down? Merlin.” Malfoy’s skin crinkled around his eyes as he shut them tightly and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What the fuck? Are you barmy?” he hissed.

A small pout appeared on her face. “It’s not— that bad of an idea, really,” she said, as if saying the words out loud might convince herself. “We’re both... intelligent. It could really work.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her with an expression that made her wonder if she’d remembered to brush her hair that morning. She reached up and patted it down just for good measure.

“Why do you want to help me?” he asked, though it came out like an accusation.

She frowned. “Who says I’m helping you?”

A noise of disbelief left his mouth before he exclaimed, “Are you serious? I’m no bleeding heart Gryffindor, but I think that this is the literal definition of helping me.”

“Okay, so this happens to fall under the category of helping you,” she conceded with a shrug. “That’s not really why I want to do it. I’m more interested in the research and experiments.” The truth slipped out of her mouth surprisingly easy, and she was pleased that she didn’t feel guilty about it. The corners of her lips lifted slightly into a careful, teasing smile instead. “You know, Malfoy, not everything is about you.”

A scowl settled across his features. “I don’t care for being used as a means to fulfill your intellectual desires.”

“That’s strange,” Hermione said, arching an eyebrow. “I would’ve thought that would garner a compliment from a Slytherin.”

“Are you _trying_ to manipulate me?” he questioned, his eyes widening in disbelief.

Her mouth opened immediately to say _no_ , but that actually wasn’t such a bad idea. Pausing, she tutted a finger against her chin, then looked back at him. 

“I wasn’t,” she said, before breaking out into a devilish grin. “But now I am. I won’t discharge you tomorrow unless you agree.”

He was flat-out gaping at her now. “Wha— is that even allowed?”

With a nod, she said, “I told you, I’m not comfortable sending you back home unless you can get your dissociation under control. This way I can check up on you, which reminds me—” she reached for her quill, “Have you been experiencing any symptoms during your time here?”

Malfoy snapped his mouth shut and tensed his jaw. “Off and on,” he grumbled. “But not when... it’s easier when I’m talking to someone.”

“Hmm. That’s useful information.” The sound of Hermione’s quill scratching against parchment filled the air, only stopping intermittently as she asked him a few more questions about his symptoms. Just as he had with all of her other questions, Malfoy answered them succinctly and begrudgingly, rarely providing more information than what was asked of him. His symptoms were complex, lasting anywhere between a few seconds to hours, as they had during the day of the fire, and varied widely in severity.

When she finished, she found herself with more questions than answers, but that was what she’d expected. Matters of the mind were complex.

Crossing one leg over the other, she told him, “I think this will be good for you, even if it doesn’t end up working.”

Malfoy sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You haven’t given me much of a choice, regardless.”

“We could always figure out another treatment plan here—”

“I’d rather not spend another second in this place if I can help it,” he said. “This place is disgusting. The only thing preventing it from crumbling into pieces is a thread of magic.”

Hermione couldn’t help but laugh. He wasn’t wrong;the hospital was in shambles in more ways than one. “Tell that to your mother, then. She’s one of our biggest donors. Speaking of,” she started, gesturing to his belongings resting on the table at his side, “did she visit you yesterday?”

He nodded and lifted a hand to rub at his brow, as if to ward off a headache. “She has a habit of being a bit… overbearing.”

He said it with a mix of affection and annoyance, the same way all of the Weasleys talked about Molly, and it caused Hermione’s heart to clench involuntarily as she remembered her own mother, who would never fuss over her ever again— who didn’t even know that she had a daughter to fuss over. And it was all her fault.

Rapidly blinking back the moisture gathering in her eyes, she plastered on a tight smile and managed to say, “Mothers often do.”

Before Malfoy could respond, or she dwelled on the memory of her lost parents a moment further, she made a large show of checking her watch for the time.

“Oh,” she said with genuine surprise. It was actually much later than she’d thought; her shift had ended over thirty minutes ago. “I should get going, but I’ll make sure your paperwork is all set so you can be discharged tomorrow without any issue.” She gathered her clipboard and quill in her arms and stood up. “And we can talk more about how to… proceed. With our plan.”

He let out a huff, already reaching over to grab his book and resume reading. “You mean _your_ plan.”

Hermione blinked at him a few times, taking in the sight of him lying on the hospital bed, dressed in the robes all of the patients at St. Mungo’s wore. He looked… smaller from this angle. She hadn’t realized it before.

“Would you take care of yourself without it?”

The muscles of his jaw clenched, and his eyes slid up to meet hers. She wasn’t scared of them now. Not here.

“No,” he replied curtly. “I guess I wouldn’t. Though I don’t know why it matters so much to you. I thought you said you weren’t interested in helping me.”

_It doesn’t matter_ , she wanted to say, but that wasn’t exactly the truth. She was more interested in the research and experiments to come, yes, but she didn’t want to leave Malfoy dangling off of the ledge he was already losing grasp of, either.

“Consider it a beneficial side effect, then. You know,” she said carefully, tiptoeing towards a topic she rarely spoke about, “I’ve helped you before. I don’t know why it’s so hard to—“

“Don’t you have somewhere to be, Granger?” he asked with disinterest, flipping through the pages of his book.

Her jaw snapped shut. She didn’t, but the hospital wasn’t exactly paying her overtime to converse with Malfoy. Or paying her overtime at all. 

“Right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”


	4. Swarm the Belly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I'm going to apologize for a lack of regular updates in every single chapter note, but here it is: I'm sorry this update is so late! I've finally settled into my new apartment in a new city, but next week I start school and work so we'll have to see how that goes. I promise that this story will not go abandoned, though. I have much more in store for it!
> 
> That being said, I hope that you enjoy this chapter. From here on out we'll get to really hone in on Draco and Hermione's developing partnership, so stay tuned for that as well. Much love to everyone who's read, commented, kudos'ed, etc.
> 
> (Also, if you haven't checked it out yet, I posted a short drabble for a friend on tumblr entitled Undivided Attention which you can find here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25684591. And feel free to follow me on tumblr here: http://featherandinkpot.tumblr.com)

_"Our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another."_

\- **Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score**

* * *

Hermione scowled at the mess she’d made in the skillet and dumped the lumpy mass of batter into the trash for the second time that night. As she walked back to the stove, she concluded that if her third try didn’t turn out, she would give up and resort to ordering take-out.

If she was being honest, Malfoy’s earlier mention of his mother had caused her to spiral a little. Most of the time, she tried not to think about her parents, what she’d done to protect them, and the consequences she faced as a result of her actions. The thought of them never failed to incite the worst feelings imaginable in her core: shame, guilt, hopelessness, and, above all, a hollow sense of loss that threatened to drown her in its magnitude.

She couldn’t let that happen.

They were alive. That was everything she’d wanted for them.

She knew what the risks were when she’d decided to erase herself from their memory. They had been accounted for, and she’d gone over the list a million times. _Alive_. She wouldn’t ever forget the sight of it underlined in her mind, placed against _forgotten_ on the opposite side.

It didn’t do herself or Monica and Wendell Wilkins any good if she allowed herself to drown in the loss. And yet, it lingered in her mind regardless, like a thin layer of grime that could never be scrubbed away. That was the thing about grief: it never really left you.

At the very least, Harry’s show of cooking yesterday had inspired her to acknowledge the memory of her parents in a subtle yet productive way: by creating— or at the very least, attempting— a platter of sweet crepes. Her father had made crepes quite often, serving them with a dash— and only ever a dash, much to her dismay— of powdered sugar and berries. It had been her mother’s favorite dish, once upon a time, though Hermione wasn’t sure if she remembered that. Magically-induced memory loss was a fickle thing.

Just as she was about to spoon another ladleful of batter into the skillet, she heard a _whoosh_ behind her as their kitchen Floo flared to life.

“You’re late,” she noted, without looking up.

“Hello to you too,” was Harry’s response. Hermione jumped at the sound of a resounding _thud_ , and turned around to see a large number of books scattered across the surface of the dining table.

“Oh, are those the—”

“Yes,” Harry responded. Rubbing at his biceps, he grumbled, “Remind me to never get in a fistfight with you. My arms are sore from just carrying these to the Floo.”

She thanked him and walked over to squeeze his arms in a mix of gratitude and good-natured teasing. Unable to resist, she peeked over his shoulders to look at the books that were now scattered across the tabletop.

Harry gave her a smile that she didn’t notice as he wrenched his arms out of her grasp and walked closer to the stove.

“Making something?”

Hermione barely processed his question as she randomly grabbed one of the books and inspected its cover, which featured the silhouettes of two identical side-profiles facing away from each other. A semi-circular set of dots connected the tops of their heads, located directly under its title: _A Guide to Advanced Occlumency._

She hummed. “Was trying to make crepes, but I can’t flip those things for the life of me.”

“Have you tried using—“

“Magic?” she finished, as she began rifling through the pages of the book. “You know I’m rubbish at cooking charms.”

The room was silent for a moment as she skimmed the contents held in the pages. Her knowledge of occlumency didn’t extend beyond the basics, as Harry had given up on the practice during his fifth year and she’d had plenty of other things to occupy her mind afterwards, but she found herself quickly becoming intrigued as her eyes roamed over the author’s description of the practice.

“—Hello?” Harry’s voice interjected. She looked up at him with wide eyes. From the expression on his face, it seemed as if he’d been waiting for her to respond for a while.

“Sorry.” She gave him an apologetic smile, though she knew he was used to this. “What did you say?”

“I said I’ll finish these up,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Or start them. You can—" he gestured to the stack of books on the table.

“Oh, Harry, you don’t have to.” She shut the book and placed it on the table, hurrying to push him out of the way. “You cooked yesterday.”

He nudged her backwards with his shoulder. “It’s not like we’re taking shifts. Move.”

She stayed in her position and folded her arms across her chest, choosing to observe him in silence.

Pushing the sleeves of his grey jumper up to his elbows, he set to work, pouring a small amount of batter onto the frying pan and swirling it around until it coated the surface evenly.

“I got to that part,” she said, though the statement was more to remind herself than to inform him. “It’s the next part that’s…”

Harry smiled at the stove as if he was sharing a secret with it. Then, in one fell swoop, he pushed the pan upwards. The crepe went airborne for a moment, flipped smoothly, and landed back into the pan all in one piece.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, but her mouth opened a fraction all the same.

“Is that the first time you’ve done that?” she demanded.

He shrugged a shoulder in place of an answer.

“Weren’t you the one who was all on us about that ‘swish-and-flick’ stuff? It’s the same concept— it’s all in here.” He tapped his wrist.

She sputtered, “That isn’t fair.”

“You can’t be good at everything, ‘Mione,” he said, holding back a laugh at the childish frown on her face. He deposited the freshly-finished crepe onto a plate and handed it to her, finally breaking into a chuckle.

* * *

“So, should we talk about it?”

Hermione stopped mid-chew and looked up at Harry, who was cutting through his crepe casually.

“Talk about what?” she asked innocently, quickly concluding that there was no way he knew about the connection between the crepes and her parents. Though he knew what she’d done, she didn’t talk about her parents much, and she definitely would've remembered sharing such a personal detail about them.

“You know,” he said in an exasperated voice, waving his fork in the direction of the stack of books occupying the other half of the table, "the small library that you requested me to bring home.” He paused and placed the piece he’d cut into his mouth. “For Malfoy.”

Oh. This conversation seemed to be headed in an entirely different direction than she'd imagined.

“I’m his Healer,” she said, swallowing the rest of her food down forcefully. Though she wasn't sure what he was trying to get at, she knew him well enough to know that it wasn't going to be good.

Harry squinted at her, as if to say, _really?_ _Is that the game we’re playing?_

“Right,” he began, “but all of this seems… a little much. I’ve never seen you do this for any other patient.”

“No other patient has had this problem,” replied Hermione. “And I’m curious about his condition.”

That was enough of the truth— of an admission— to give her time to see how her first few sessions with Malfoy went before she broke _that_ particular piece of news to Harry. Based on his current state of interrogation, he would have a fit if she were to tell him about the deal she'd struck with his former archnemesis right now.

“There’s a lot of different parts to it all, and it’s been a while since I’ve been this challenged,” she continued, figuring that the more reasoning she provided, the less he would push her. “I don’t get to explore the theoretical sides of these things very often.”

He nodded from his seat across from her. “I know, and I’m glad that you’re getting excited about work. I just wish it wasn’t—”

“Malfoy,” she finished for him. “Yeah.”

“Do you wish that too?” Harry asked, leaning forward just a fraction. “That it wasn’t Malfoy? Or are you doing this because it’s him?”

Hermione’s eyebrows knotted together in a mixture of surprise and confusion at his bluntness; Harry was rarely this direct with her.

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“It’s just—” he sat back in his chair fully, “—I remember when you said he apologized to you in the library and you told him to bugger off—”

“That isn’t what I said.” She couldn't follow his train of thought for the life of her, but she felt the need to correct him, regardless. “I thanked him, and then I said that he shouldn’t have a hard time understanding why I couldn’t say that all was forgiven—"

“And that’s fine,” Harry interjected, with a steadiness that made Hermione believe it really was. “You could’ve told him to fuck off to the next dimension and it would’ve been just as reasonable. I just wanted to make sure that you’re- you’re not doing this out of guilt, or anything like that.”

His eyes were soft as he looked at her, and his voice was full of such honest concern that Hermione felt her heart clench involuntarily. It was an absurd idea, yes, for Harry to be worried about her because he thought that she was helping Malfoy out of some need for _retribution_ , or whatnot, but it was also a little bit amazing in that it reminded her: you could know someone for half of your life, and still be surprised at all the ways they cared for you.

“Harry,” she said gently, “when you testified for him— did you do that out of guilt for what you did to him during our sixth year?”

“No,” he replied immediately, giving her an incredulous look that reflected her initial reaction to his suggestion. “I don’t think I’ll ever _not_ feel guilty about that, but that wasn’t why I testified. I wouldn’t have let you and Ron do the same if that was the reason.”

She nodded and said quietly, “I’m not doing this out of guilt, either. I don’t feel guilty about what I said to him then. And even if I did, I’m doing this because I’m interested in what I can learn from it, and I don’t hate Malfoy enough to be dissuaded by the fact that it might help him.”

Though her words were honest, something insistent still tugged at her, making her pause.

“I dislike him, but I don’t hate him,” she clarified, and the feeling dissipated. “He’s a human too.”

“I know,” replied Harry. “I just wanted to make sure that you’re doing this for the right reasons.”

“I know,” she echoed. He was always looking out for her: to protect her from others, as well as herself.

A comfortable, welcome silence draped over them like a thick blanket as their minds reeled from the absurdity and honesty of their conversation.

Harry was the first to break, letting out a soft laugh as he ducked his head, returning his attention to his plate.

“Alright,” he said through a sigh, “no more talking about Draco Malfoy at the dinner table.”

Hermione chuckled lightly. “ _Please_.”

In an effort to change the subject, Harry gestured to what was left of her dish with a smile. “What do you think?”

She looked down, realizing that she’d gotten so caught up in their conversation that she’d forgotten what the dish tasted like, and why she’d tried to cook it in the first place. She cut off a decent-sized piece and popped it into her mouth, letting the flavors settle onto her tongue, allowing herself to bask in the recollection, before she swallowed it down.

It was funny, how a few simple ingredients mixed together could bring back such vivid memories. Sugar, butter, flour, eggs, and milk. There was something poignant about the concept of a memory neatly packaged into these five respective parts, tucked away into them like a present.

If she tried hard enough, she could understand how the idea of nearly anything was beautiful. Meaningful. Things weren’t so bad to look at if all you saw was a haze; memories weren’t so painful if you didn’t remember all of the details. A crepe could just be a crepe.

Hermione wanted a world where that was the case. She longed for it so badly that it made her chest ache, because she knew— God, did she know—

If you stepped closer to a haze and saw its edges, the reality of remembering was something entirely different. You could make out all of the parts that were missing.

Her chair screeched against the floor as she pushed it backwards an inch.

“They’re good,” she replied, a soft smile on her face. “But I’ve had better.”

* * *

“Malfoy,” she greeted as she walked into his room, her nose pointed downwards as she reviewed the notes she’d taken during his stay. When she looked up, she was slightly shocked to see that his bed was empty, but the sheets were still unmade, and there was a deep indentation in the mattress, indicating that wherever he'd gone, he was bound to come back.

She looked back at his file just to double-check that he hadn’t been released early; a sigh of relief left her mouth when she confirmed that the document clearly stated that he wasn’t to be released until she saw him.

Closing the folder shut, she assessed what the appropriate amount of time was to wait for Malfoy to return.

A minute? No, half of one had probably already passed by now. Sixty seconds always went by more quickly than she thought they would.

Two, then? Definitely no longer than three. She had other patients to see, after all. Ones that occupied a reasonable amount of her brain space, ones that she didn't have conversations about at the bloody dining table with her best friend, ones that weren’t—

“Oh,” a voice came from the side of the room.

Hermione whipped around to find Malfoy standing in the middle of the restroom entrance she’d forgotten was there and stopped in her tracks.

Something was very, very different about him today.

Was it his hair? _No_ , she confirmed with an upwards flick of her eyes; that was still the same shade of blinding white-blonde as it had always been. His clothes, maybe? Though he'd been wearing the same drab, standard grey hospital robes since he'd been admitted, something _did_ look decidedly unusual about them.

She stared at him for a few more moments, and then, suddenly, the realization of what had thrown her off-kilter hit her like a bludger to the chest: it was the first time she’d seen him standing in nearly a year. The sight of his pale, lanky legs was an unfamiliar one.

She didn’t remember him being so tall. He must’ve been almost Ron’s height, with the way there was only a small gap between the top of the doorway and his head. Though she was sure she'd seen his height listed on his file, she couldn't remember the number. Of course, that was perfectly fine, seeing as it didn't impact her treatment at all, but now she was a little— curious.

Just for curiosity’s sake.

“You’re here earlier than I anticipated." Malfoy's voice broke through her thoughts.

She drew her eyes back down to meet his face, finding a hint of amusement in the corner of his eyes.

Cheeks warming, she replied, “My shift begins earlier on Fridays.”

He gave her a small nod.

"I just got here," she said. He was still looking at her funny, and she didn’t want him to think that she’d been waiting around in his room for him. "I didn't realize that you were in the restroom. I was right about to leave."

"Well, I’m here now,” he drawled, sweeping a lazy arm over his body.

Hermione rolled her eyes in response and prayed that the rest of her face wasn’t betraying the nonchalant attitude she was trying so hard to project. How did he make indifference look so natural?

Steeling her nerves, she took a few steps in his direction. “I’ve, uh, got some good news. Your paperwork is all set, so you're free to leave after I look at your burn and you sign some forms."

With a quirk of his eyebrow, Malfoy propped an elbow up to rest on the doorway.

"Really. Is that all?"

Hermione shifted her weight onto her left leg and bit her lip. "There is the matter of what we discussed yesterday—"

"—Ah, there it is," he said, the side of his mouth tilting upwards in a smirk. "The terms that my prison guard has set for me."

Despite the curl of his lips, his tone was so bitter that she could nearly taste it on her tongue. She tried to swallow it down, but as she did so, an equally unwelcome feeling of guilt took its place.

 _Guilt_. The word rattled in her mind like a bird flapping its wings against a cage.

This was different than the kind of guilt Harry had talked about last night. This was worse.

With a reluctant sigh, Hermione said, “You don’t actually have to do this.”

Malfoy gave her a questioning look.

“Are you giving me a choice now?” he asked, with an uncharacteristic amount of disbelief in the edges of his voice. Though it was faint, it was enough to make her wonder what his surprise was directed towards. Was it her, or was it the concept of being given a choice in general?

In retrospect, he had agreed to her terms— which were surely some gross violation of her rights as a Healer, not that she’d _told_ anyone about it— with shockingly little backlash, aside from a few snide comments.

Though she’d initially believed his acquiescence to be the product of her manipulation (agree, or stay in St. Mungo’s), she now had the creeping suspicion that Malfoy was simply accustomed to people telling him what to do, and having little say in the matter.

A small voice in the back of her head went, _you know this to be a fact_ , causing yet another wave of that unspeakable emotion to wash over her. She, again, allowed it to pull her back.

Her jaw clenched as she stated, “As… enticing as it is, I’m not going to make you miserable on purpose.”

By then, he’d rearranged his facial features into a slate of cool impassivity, but this comment made his lips stretch into another smirk. “You’d make an awful Slytherin, you know?”

She gave him her best attempt at her own condescending smile. “Thank you.”

“ _Anyways_ ,” she continued, averting her gaze to the forms she held, “I’ll have to update these documents. At the very least, you’ll need to come in every so often to report on your condition, but I can transfer the responsibility to someone else. It shouldn’t be too—"

“—Hold on,” Malfoy's voice cut in. “What?”

Hermione felt a flicker of annoyance and lifted her head to scowl at him. Not this again.

“I’ve _told_ you that your condition is serious, you can’t honestly be surprised that—”

“—No. I meant,” he stopped to let out a frustrated sigh, running a hand over his face as he did so, “—why would you transfer me to someone else?”

The frown fell from her face.

“What? Isn’t that what you want?”

He took a deep breath.

“Look,” he said, “you’re the Healer who’s most familiar with my case. It doesn’t make sense for it to be anyone else.”

This was true, but just a moment ago, he had called her his prison guard. So—

“—And I already agreed to your plan, didn’t I?” he said, pushing himself off the doorjamb and walking towards her.

Before Hermione could say _no, not really, I don’t think you did_ , he had already traversed the space between them. With him just inches away from her, she had to crane her neck upward to see his face. She took a small step back.

“What are you—”

“Let’s just stick to it, okay? Before I change my mind,” he muttered, then held out his right arm. “Here. Fucking get this over with.”

She blinked up at him, trying to comprehend what was happening, and what the words coming out of his mouth meant. In the end, all she managed was, “You don’t want to sit down?”

Malfoy’s head lolled backwards, following the movement of his eyes as he rolled them.

“I’ve been on that bed for so long I’m losing feeling in my lower body," he huffed. "You can do this standing up, right?”

His words caused a tiny, inconsequential thought to appear in the very back of her mind, which questioned if he had intended to make an innuendo. Luckily, Hermione did not have the misfortune of dwelling on that thought for long, as Malfoy began unraveling his bandage with his other hand.

“God, would you _wait_?” she said, snapping into action. She tossed her clipboard on the bed and smacked his hand away.

A small noise of protest left his mouth, but he stayed quiet as the bandages fell away from his skin. The room was silent, and the shared air around them was still as they held their breaths in anticipation. This was a present in its own way, and just like a child on Christmas, Hermione broke out into a grin when she saw the tiniest bit of scarring where there had once been an array of blisters and swashes of red. Nothing made her happier than seeing her work produce something _good._ The marks were just a shade darker than his own skin tone, but the difference was so faint that she could barely identify it. Even up close, they could pass for a trick of the light.

Without thinking, forgetting that he was Malfoy, and she was her, and they were _them,_ Hermione swept a thumb over his arm to test the texture of the scars.

His head snapped down sharply, and the movement caused her to jerk her hand back so quickly it was as if she’d been burned herself.

“Sorry.” Her heart was pounding in her chest. “Just—” she exhaled loudly, “—take a look at it.”

He gave her a pointed look but otherwise complied, moving his arm closer to his eyes and holding it up against the harsh lighting of the room. Blue-green veins twisted and turned, like vines wrapped around a branch, as he examined his arm from multiple angles.

“Not bad,” he said evenly. His arm fell by his side. This seemed like high praise coming from him, but Hermione refused to dignify such a half-hearted response with a ‘thank you’ on the basis of principle. She gave him a nod instead.

“Then all you need to do is sign these forms,” she said, handing him the clipboard that she’d tossed onto his bed. “And we can— talk. About how to…”

He grabbed the forms without speaking, leaving her to fumble for words as he read over the documents.

“What day works best for you?” she asked. “I can only do Saturdays and Sundays, because I’m here otherwise, but—”

Malfoy reached over across the bed suddenly, swiping the pair of reading glasses off of the bedside table, before putting them on.

 _Right_ , she thought, blinking dumbly at the sight of wire-rimmed frames perched delicately on his pointed nose. He wore glasses now.

“Granger, just pick a day and time,” he said in a bored voice, moving to sign the form.

Still silent, Hermione watched as his left hand glided across the page in one graceful, fluid motion, an ability that was surely an outcome of his pureblood upbringing. As he lifted his hand to reveal his signature, she found herself both infuriated and entranced by his handwriting, which was a thin script so tidy and elegant it put a Self-Writing quill to shame. The sight of it made her feel a little lightheaded; there was absolutely no reason that the words _Draco Lucius Malfoy_ should look so beautiful.

“How about Sunday mornings?” she replied, tearing her eyes away from the paper.

Harry always visited Teddy and Andromeda on Sundays, and would sometimes go earlier to stay the night on Saturday evenings. It wasn’t that she was intentionally trying to sneak around behind Harry’s back, but she was always alone at home anyways on those days. It made the most sense.

“Alright.” Malfoy flipped the page.

“Um, where would you like to meet?” she asked.

As the words left her mouth, she realized that if an outsider was to listen in on their current conversation, they might think that the two of them were planning a date. She turned her head back to look at the door, confirming that it was closed.

“My flat,” said Malfoy, in a tone far calmer than she ever imagined his voice to be saying those two words, in this context. “Can’t have half the Wizarding World ending up in St. Mungo’s if we meet in a public place.”

“Your flat?” she echoed.

He raised an eyebrow and handed her back her clipboard. “Don’t get any ideas, Granger.”

This time, there was no misinterpreting his words.

As her cheeks flushed for a second time that morning, she replied, “I assure you, I don’t have any _ideas_. I just thought that— you don’t live at the Manor?”

His eyes moved to the side of the room abruptly, and his bored, nonchalant attitude quickly morphed into something harsher at the edges.

“No,” came his curt reply. “I visit regularly, but I don’t live there anymore.”

“Oh. So you were just visiting when…” her voice tilted upwards at the end to form the words into a question.

Malfoy’s posture visibly stiffened for a moment, then relaxed a fraction.

“I have a laboratory set up at the Manor,” he answered matter-of-factly. “They require a lot of space and I haven’t gotten around to expanding my flat yet.”

With a turn of his chin, he brought his gaze back to her.

It was cold. Lifeless. Dull. Like looking into a worn piece of glass. Was he—?

Her pulse quickened. She blinked. Behind her eyelids—

(An ornate chandelier swayed in the air above her, at least a hundred years old. Even in her haze, she could feel its significance; everything in Malfoy Manor looked back at her with a sense of importance, reminding her that this was a place of heirlooms and people far more valuable than her.

A hand twisted in her hair like a talon. A blade pressed against her throat like a kiss.

Through heavy eyelids, she watched the tiny pieces of crystal sparkle as they twisted and turned, like falling snowflakes glittering under a streetlight.

Her limbs were frozen, her voice was gone, her mind was—

All she could do was watch.)

“Am I free to go,” Malfoy said, his dry voice breaking her out of her reverie. It was neither a question nor a statement.

Like a swimmer gasping for air, Hermione inhaled a shaky, audible breath that allowed the tightening feeling in her chest to loosen an inch. _You are safe, she is dead, she cannot hurt you ever again_.

Confusion swarmed her mind as she came to, realizing what had just happened, processing the words Malfoy had just said.

She hadn’t— that hadn’t happened in a while. Just like the nightmares hadn’t happened in a while. It seemed like this plan was becoming an increasingly worse idea with every day that passed, but she couldn’t back out now, not when she’d already given Malfoy an out and he’d stuck with it. That surely counted for something, though she wasn’t sure exactly what _something_ was.

Taking another deep breath, she refocused her gaze at a spot on his shoulder with a laser-sharp intensity.

“Yes,” she replied, surprised to hear that her voice only shook slightly. “I just need your address.”

Her fingers wrapped around her wand so tightly she could feel its magic pulsing in her veins, steadying her trembling arm, calming her anxious mind. She conjured a blank slip of paper. “Here.”

With mechanical movements of his hand, Malfoy took the paper from her, scrawled his address on it, and handed it back silently.

“I’ll see you Sunday, then,” she said, stuffing the paper into the pocket of her robes. “Someone will come in soon and help you with your discharge.”

He made a noise of acknowledgment, and at that moment, Hermione found herself strangely grateful for Malfoy’s current state, as the version of him without this disturbing level of apathy surely would’ve had something to say at yet another obstacle in the discharge process.

She nodded in response and took a step back.

Though her heart was still beating a staccato rhythm in her chest, she could at least breathe. She’d learned early on during the War that as long as she could breathe, she could manage whatever came next. Life was just one moment after the other, and breathing was the only thing she really needed to keep the moments moving along. It was the truest way to track the passage of time; even in a world where she could revisit moments that she'd already experienced, she could never get back the breaths she'd already taken.

Reminding herself that she had this ability, Hermione took a deep inhale and left Malfoy's room without so much as a goodbye. There was no point in such a banal formality when they were going to see each other in two days, and he was half-catatonic, and she was— well. Whatever she was.

She closed the door to his room with a _click_. It felt terribly anticlimactic.

No other door opened; that was a moment that would come so many breaths later there was no point in counting the number in between. Instead, on this particular exhale, Hermione pressed a hand against the scar on her arm, hoping that the pressure would quell the prickling sensation there.


	5. Swelling to a Blaze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! I'm so sorry this update is several months late and that it's rather short. Real life definitely got the better of me in the latter half of 2020, but I'm hoping that I'll have more time to write and focus on this story in the new year! Thanks so much to everyone who has read, commented, and followed along so far- it truly means so much to me. I hope you enjoy :)

_“There can be no growth without curiosity and no adaptability without being able to explore, through trial and error, who you are and what matters to you.”_

\- **Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score**

* * *

Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was quiet by the time Hermione rolled out of bed.

Though she was a morning person by nature, the erratic sleep schedule she’d developed over the past two years had led her to appreciate the act of sleeping in on a weekend. It wasn’t out of the ordinary, then, when she trekked down the creaking stairway to find that Harry had already left for Andromeda’s.

She was secretly grateful that she hadn’t had to encounter him in the morning. If he had asked her what her plans were for the rest of the day, she wasn’t sure if she had it in her to lie, but she _was_ sure that telling him, “Oh, funny you should ask, I’m actually going to meet with Draco Malfoy at his flat!” wouldn’t be the best way to start either of their days. She realized that she’d have to tell Harry eventually, but she’d break the news to him gently, on a day he was in a good mood, and hopefully, he’d keep any snide comments to a minimum.

Harry was her best friend, and she knew that he would never push her aside or look down on her for her choices, but their conversation over dinner the other day still weighed on her mind. She didn’t want him to worry about her or question her decisions— she was doing plenty of the latter on her own.

Chancing a glance at the basement clock, Hermione found that it was ten, a little later than she’d expected. Though they had never agreed upon a specific time, Malfoy struck her as an early riser for some reason. He probably wasn’t going to be pleased if she showed up midday.

With this assumption in mind, she got ready quicker than usual, forgoing her usual morning cup of tea and brushing her fingers through her hair instead of bothering with a comb. She tugged on a pair of her favorite jeans and threw on a jumper— a deep shade of red, just for good measure— before grabbing the pile of books stacked on the kitchen table and shoving them into her beaded bag.

Hermione swung her bag over her shoulder and entered the closet to reach into the pocket of her healer robes, paper rustling against fabric as her fingers wrapped around and withdrew the note she was looking for.

She examined the address once more, still in disbelief that Malfoy apparently lived in a flat in Somerset instead of at the Manor, though she’d already made a mental note to refrain from talking about _that_ particular subject unless she wanted to have a repeat episode of… whatever had happened on Friday. It seemed that there was a long list of topics that she had to steer clear of, for both his sake and her own, but it was impossible to know what the list contained until it was already too late.

At his best, Malfoy was a sarcastic smirk and half-hearted insult shoved inside the body of a person who was civil towards her; at his worst, he was an impenetrable brick wall that possessed the emotional capacity of a dung beetle. It was hard to make sense of what was affected by his Occlumency versus his dissociation, and she was surer than ever that there was an explanation for that.

She was _not_ entirely sure, however, that the two of them would survive the awkwardness that was sure to come long enough to figure out that explanation.

For the approximately hundredth time since Friday, Hermione wondered what on earth had possessed her to agree to go to Malfoy’s flat. Why hadn’t she protested more, instead of asking him a question about his place of residence that had subsequently sent both of them into their own versions of mental spirals? Just because _he_ couldn’t stand the idea of being in public with her didn’t mean that she had to go along with everything he said.

Besides, he’d already appeared in the paper for far worse things— unless he thought that being seen in public with her was worse.

God. This was all going to go terribly, wasn’t it?

Staring at the note in her hand, Hermione took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and Disapparated.

* * *

As soon as the uncomfortable sensation of Apparition wore off, Hermione glanced around at her surroundings.

The building looming in front was a traditional, Georgian-style building, with red bricks neatly layered on top of each other for three stories. Neatly trimmed hedges adorned both sides of the entrance, bleeding into the vast expanse of lush greenery that surrounded the complex. Tendrils of ivy trailed out, up, and over its façade, a lovely contrast against the muted clay. There were a few thick vines that traced the top of a window like an awning.

Clearly, Malfoy’s pureblooded tastes had not faltered. Though it wasn’t nearly as grand as the Manor, it was still strikingly beautiful, and obviously expensive.

It was welcoming. Quaint, even, which were adjectives she never would’ve associated with Malfoy otherwise. The longer she looked around, the more she could understand why someone growing up in a home like the Manor would want to move to a place like this, where the world didn’t seem so enclosed on itself. Even with the sky still filled with clouds, it seemed more open here, especially coming from the densely-packed streets of London.

After a minute, Hermione gathered her courage and rapped her knuckles against the front door three times before taking a step back. Several seconds later, the door swung open to reveal Malfoy dressed in an all-black turtleneck and trouser ensemble.

“Granger,” he said perfunctorily, offering her what had become their customary greeting.

He looked— so different. The sensible part of Hermione’s brain realized that Malfoy must’ve worn Muggle clothing at least occasionally, seeing as he lived in a non-Wizarding community, but the other, less useful part of her mind took several moments to realize that he had spoken to her at all.

When she finally did, it hit her with a start, and she shifted a little, like her center of gravity needed some adjusting, before replying, “Malfoy.” She paused. “Your place looks nice.”

He blinked and took a step away from the door, creating a space in the entryway for her to step into, one hand remaining on the doorknob.

It was a bizarre sight to witness: Malfoy dressed in Muggle clothing, all-black against the colorful greenery that surrounded them, holding the door to his flat open for her, inviting her inside, treating a Mudblood with _manners_.

Maybe that last thought was a little unfair, Hermione noted internally, seeing as she couldn’t even remember the last time Malfoy had expressed any disdain towards her because of her blood status. He brought up other things, sure, like her bad taste in clothing and friends, but even those insults were delivered without conviction, like he was saying them out of obligation rather than malice. And here he was, holding the door open for her as if she hadn’t punched him in the face when they were teenagers, or they hadn’t fought on opposing sides of a war.

It made her wonder what sort of obligation this gesture was made from: was this repentance, or a twisted demonstration of just how far those pureblood manners were engrained in him? Maybe this was his body’s way of telling both of them, _I now see you as a woman and not the scum of the earth_ , but if she looked at it that way, it made her want to punch him all over again.

She was still trying to process what this meant when a small twitch seized the space between Malfoy’s eyebrows and his lips turned downwards.

“Are you coming in or not?” he asked, the irritation in his voice nearly eliciting an audible sigh of relief from Hermione.

Forcing out a huff instead, she stepped over the threshold, and just like that, she was inside Draco Malfoy’s flat.

* * *

The interior seemed more suited to his tastes than the exterior, with dark mahogany floors and deep green wallpaper. It wasn’t nearly as _cheery_ as the outside, but it wasn’t unwelcoming, either. In fact, it reminded her of 12 Grimmauld Place to a degree that was just short of unsettling.

They walked forward into the large sitting room, which was adorned by a variety of furniture that looked very much like it was taken from the Black family vaults.

In the corner, a mangled conglomeration of blue fabric nested next to the sofa caught her eye; partially because of its color, which stuck out in the sea of greens and greys, but mostly because of its strange configuration. It looked as if someone had taken two matching chairs, placed them opposite one another, and transfigured them together.

“Malfoy,” she said, unable to hide the amusement in her voice, “what in Merlin’s name is that thing?”

He followed her line of vision and immediately let out a harsh breath through his nostrils.

“Don’t,” he replied sharply. A scowl had taken over his face, and she smiled at the sight, entertained by the idea that a piece of furniture could elicit such a strong reaction from a person she hadn’t seen express more than five emotions during their interactions.

“Botched transfiguration?” she questioned innocently.

“Quite the opposite.”

Anyone else would have followed that statement up with an explanation, but Hermione was quickly learning that Malfoy was very bad at divulging information unless he was asked.

“You can’t say that and not expect me to ask what happened.”

His eyes flashed downwards to look at her.

“I believe I will,” he said through tight lips, before turning away and walking back in the direction of the entryway.

Hermione stood still for a beat, trying to figure out whether she was meant to follow him.

After a few moments, when it was clear that no footsteps were shuffling behind him, Malfoy turned around with one hand stuffed in the pocket of his pants. The action should’ve seemed stiff and unnatural on his body, bred to be upright and posh, but the casual slope of his shoulder and the looseness at his elbow suggested that this was a position his arm was comfortable in.

Which meant that he _did_ wear Muggle clothing at least semi-regularly. Hermione tucked that thought away in her mind, unsure of what to do with it, but wanting to hold onto it anyway.

“Are you coming?” His drawl was exceptionally prominent; it seemed that close proximity to vintage furniture intensified his haughty tone. “You’re allowed to walk in my flat without my permission, you know.”

She rolled her eyes but walked across the room to follow him, taking great strides to keep up with his long legs that took the stairs two steps at a time. He led her up a staircase that she remembered passing by on her journey from the entryway to the sitting room. The sound of their shoes clunking against the wooden planks reverberated against the walls and echoed down the stairwell.

Once they reached the landing, Malfoy turned right, walking past a series of closed doors before stopping at one. He reached out to twist the doorknob open, and then, as if remembering something very important, froze suddenly.

He turned to face her with a serious slant of his eyebrows.

“Granger,” he said slowly, “this is my library. Please refrain from making any strange noises.”

Hermione’s face twisted into something between apprehension and excitement. Through a strangled smile, she replied, “I don’t know what you expect from me, but alright.”

Malfoy stared at her for another moment, as if scrutinizing the validity of her statement, before opening the door to let her in for the second time that day.

She walked in and had to swallow a gasp.

The room was much taller than she’d expected, and every inch of wall space was covered in books that seemed to extend for an impossible length, drawing her gaze upward. His collection was a rather impressive mix of old and new: historic, muted neutrals with embossed gold letters on the spines filled the shelves to the left, slowly giving way to brighter hues and bolder letters as her eyes scanned across the room.

Her feet began moving as if under _Imperius_ , with one shoe shuffling against the wooden floor and then the next, until she found herself within arms-length of Malfoy’s endless expanse of books.

She reached up to tip the nearest book down for a closer examination when she heard a faint shuffle behind her. The sound of it made her freeze, serving as a reminder of where she was, who these books belonged to, and who was right beside her.

“They won’t bite,” said Malfoy, his voice lighter than usual.

The sound of him softened at the edges made the tension in her shoulders dissipate despite its strangeness, or perhaps because of it.

She glanced in the direction his voice had come from to catch his eyes trained on her, and those, too, seemed more mellow, as if someone had taken a finger and rubbed away the tension at their corners. She hadn’t noticed it before, but there had been a tightness at his temples when he’d been at St. Mungo’s. It was one of those things you only noticed when it was gone.

He seemed more human, here in this place away from Malfoy Manor that he’d made into a home. If it hadn’t been Malfoy, Hermione might have ventured to say he seemed more like himself. He was clearly more comfortable here than in the hospital, and people acted more like themselves when they were comfortable, right? But this _was_ Malfoy, and when it came to him, Hermione didn’t know up from down or left from right.

She didn’t know if this blip in his usually impenetrable coat of armor was an invitation for her to speak like this, too— as if they were two people who might enjoy the presence of each other’s company, but she took it as one anyway.

“I’ll assume you haven’t gotten around to training them, then.”

Then, at the corner of her ear, there it was: a laugh. It was so quiet that she had strain to hear it, but the sound was unmistakable, with a tone shifting upward just enough to not be mistaken for a sigh.

Hermione couldn’t help a smile from overtaking her features. Without regard to the subject of the book in her hands, she flipped it open and scanned the text in a feeble attempt to obscure her expression from the blonde beside her.

God, he really did like potions. The entire thing was about the history of Draught of Living Death.

She returned the volume to its place on the shelf and turned around, holding up her bag.

“I brought books, too,” she announced. “From the Hogwarts library.”

“From Hogwarts?” repeated Malfoy with a raised eyebrow.

“I asked Harry to check out some books,” she said in a wary voice, worried about how he might react to the mention of her friend’s name.

His mouth twisted into a grimace. “I can’t believe they’re letting Potter _teach_. Merlin help those students.”

The tension in her shoulders eased. She could deal with an insult. “He’s a good Defense professor— the best one they’ve had in a while.”

“That isn’t exactly difficult to accomplish.” He paused, features growing still. “Does he know?”

“About what?”

“Don’t act dumb,” replied Malfoy, eyes flashing to meet hers. “About this.”

She pursed her lips together while a pang of shame stabbed at her chest. “Not really. He knows that I’m— _was_ your Healer, and he knows why you came in. I haven’t told him about… this. Yet.”

She expected Malfoy to either fly into a fit of rage or descend into the depths of a cavern she hadn’t figured out how to reach. Of course, he did neither, staying silent instead, holding her gaze so tightly she couldn’t have looked away if she tried.

“He won’t tell anyone about what happened,” she blurted.

As she stared back at Malfoy, recognition dawned over her; she’d seen that look before. He was doing that thing again, where it seemed like he was trying to crack open her skull and unravel her thoughts.

A rush of panic flooded her senses. She would know if he was performing legilimency, right?

“Alright.”

Hermione blinked, and the moment broke. “You’re not angry?” She hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but it seemed that her sense of restraint had been briefly taken over by shock.

Twin creases appeared at the corners of his pale brows. “Would you like me to be?” It almost sounded like a threat.

She made a face. “I just thought—”

“I don’t care to know what you and Potter talk about,” he said sharply, moving towards the polished walnut table in the center of the room. He sat down, slipped a hand into the pocket of his trousers, and withdrew a pair of glasses to slide onto his face. “Especially if your usual topics of conversation are so boring that I must be inserted in them.”

Trilling his fingers along the wooden surface of the table, a quiet rhythm danced in the atmosphere, and her mind drifted to the rule that Harry had established earlier that week: _no talking about Malfoy at the dinner table._ Were they really that predictable?

“If I wake up tomorrow and see an article in the _Prophet_ about me, then I’ll be angry, Granger.” His voice came out low in both volume and timbre, rumbling under the sound of his fingertips, drawing her out of her thoughts.

“You won’t,” came her firm reply. “I promise.”

She walked over to stand across from him, motioning to the empty chair in a silent question. _May I sit? Are we done?_

He rose his hand and gave a lazy half-wave in response.

Taking that as an affirmative, Hermione sat and flung her bag onto the table, the heavy _thump_ of impact resounding deep and full against the vintage wood.

Malfoy sat back and eyed the pouch as if a handful of spiders were going to crawl out of it. “Merlin. What have you got in that thing?”

“I told you,” she replied, reaching in and withdrawing as many volumes as she could wrap her hands around. “Books.”

“I wasn’t aware that an Order of Merlin got you these sorts of privileges from the Ministry.” Wood creaked as he shifted his chair closer to the table’s edge. “An extension charm? Really?”

Hermione froze with a hand stuffed deep in her bag and regarded Malfoy with a serious look. “It doesn’t,” she replied carefully.

His lips parted slightly, revealing a flash of white. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.” Her voice was firm as she brought out the remaining texts and placed them in their own stack, adjusting them meticulously, trying to ignore the way Malfoy’s evident surprise was making her very aware of her talents, and how— nice it felt. “Look, I’ll keep your secret from the press, and you’ll keep mine from the Ministry.”

Malfoy’s mouth curled upward. “You might not have made a bad Slytherin after all.”

“That’s not the compliment you think it is,” she replied, though the look of muted approval on his face felt very much like one.

“Yes, well…” He ran a finger over the spines in front of him, and his amused voice and small smile faded with every centimetre he brushed. “Why are so many of these about occlumency?”

Hermione cleared her throat. If they were going to work to create a treatment, there would be no dancing around the subject of his condition.

“I’ve got a very strong suspicion that your dissociation and use of occlumency are linked,” she said matter-of-factly. “I thought that we could go through some of these books and look for any indication of that.”

She glanced up at him and pointed towards the stacks. “Are you familiar with any of these?”

He shook his head slightly, a careful turn of the neck in one direction and the other that made the light glint across the surface of his glasses. “I learned through… other methods.”

The tightness of his voice was enough for Hermione to know not to ask any more questions. He’d probably have to divulge the information at some point, but she’d let it slide for now.

“Well, we have a lot of stuff to sift through then. Shall we?”

* * *

Working with Malfoy was more pleasant than she’d expected. They read and took notes in near silence, only breaking through the quiet to briefly comment on tidbits of things worth discussing. Hermione was always the first to speak.

An hour passed by, then two, that consisted of little more than:

“I didn’t know there were so many ways to practice occlumency. I had only heard of the shield technique.”

A noise of acknowledgment from Malfoy.

“It’s very interesting that an established practice is taught primarily through metaphors.”

The sound of paper scratching against another as a page flipped. “How else would it be taught.” A clipped sentence; not a question. “It’s not like you can see it happening.”

A quill stilled against parchment, leaving a thick dot of ink that blurred at the edges. “That’s fair.”

And then they would descend into silence again.

Throughout her years at Hogwarts, Hermione’s main study partners had been Harry and Ron, which meant that not much studying ever got done at all. Every minute was interrupted by one of the boys discussing another piece of gossip, or talking about quidditch, or complaining about the fact that they were studying in the first place. Working with someone who was capable of focus was a pleasant experience, even if that person was Malfoy.

Every so often, she would stealthily examine him out of her peripheral vision. Each time she found him with his head lowered, reading a passage, taking notes, or both. The sight caused similar images of him studying alone in the library during their Eighth Year to flood her mind, and for the first time, Hermione wondered how differently her year might have gone if she had accepted his apology that day.

She still stood firmly by her actions, but it was an entertaining thought. As much as it pained her to acknowledge, she might have received an Outstanding on her potions N.E.W.T.’s instead of an Exceeds Expectations if she’d studied with Malfoy.

By the time it reached one o’clock, Hermione’s stomach was growling at a steady, intermittent pace, punctuating the atmosphere with noises becoming increasingly loud in volume. She chastised herself for not eating breakfast, embarrassment intensifying with each gurgle.

They hadn’t discussed the topic of food, breaks, or how long these research sessions were meant to last in general, leaving her with a growing pit of anxiety that mixed with the empty contents of her insides. She should say something, she realized, but what?

Finally, after the— eighth? Or was it tenth?— time a rumble filled the air, Malfoy placed his book down and looked up at her.

“I was unaware that such a small person was capable of producing a noise resembling a Hungarian Horntail.”

She flushed crimson. “I’m not- I forgot to eat breakfast.”

A chair groaned across the floor as he stood up. “And you had the audacity to say that I didn’t take care of myself.”

It sounded like something Harry would say, which was— strange.

She focused on her hunger instead. Was there even food in this flat? No house elf had greeted her upon arrival, but the idea of Malfoy regularly preparing his own food seemed the most outlandish one of all. He might have shifted away from his pureblooded elitism, but he was still filthy rich.

It was no matter. The very thought of sharing a meal with Malfoy in any context was enough for Hermione to uproot her body off the seat. Being in his company for the past few hours hadn’t been the nightmare she’d anticipated, but she wasn’t about to push her luck during their very first session.

“I should probably go.”

Malfoy tilted his head down slightly, the movement drawing her attention to his chin. It looked less pointy than she remembered last.

“Alright,” was his reply.

He led her out of the library and into the flat’s entrance, and they paused at the door. A moment of silence hung between them, thick with uncertainty and awkwardness. Hermione dug her feet into the tips of her shoes, thinking about how the silence they shared had gone from comforting to stifling within the span of a few moments.

“Same time next week?” she finally asked. The words sounded all wrong, but she couldn’t figure out what else to say.

"Yes." He nodded in response.

She gave him a nod of her own before stepping outside and Disapparating.

For a moment, her hunger was forgotten as that familiar pressure compressed every inch of her skin, squeezing and rearranging her body into something that wasn't quite matter. Harry had never understood why she preferred Apparition to flying, but there was a certain ease to it that she enjoyed. It was uncomfortable, yes, but only briefly. Everything else was quite straightforward.

All of the space between origin and destination disappeared when you Disapparated, along with yourself. Here one moment, and gone the next.


End file.
